## Tuesday, May 20, 2008

### Display Maths with Wordpress

Displaying Mathematics notation in a browser is not an easy task. One option is by using a plugin such as Design Science MathPlayer™, which enables Microsoft Internet Explorer to display mathematical notation in Web pages. However, the plugin is not so popular, and it does not comes with the browser by default.

Another way to do it is by using a public LaTeX server, using standard LaTeX code. An example of a public LaTeX server is http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=. As an example, http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=int_{-infty }^{infty }e^{-x^{2}};dx=sqrt{pi }&bg=fff&s=2.

One way to use it is by using the img tag of HTML.

For example,
<img src="http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex= int_{-infty}^{infty}e^{-x^{2}};dx=sqrt{pi }&bg=fff&s=2" alt="" />
will produce this image.

Please note that adding bg=fff would produce an image with white background (default is black). As an addition, s=2 is for the size.

However, it is a messy and error prone job to do it this way.

Fortunately, there is an alternative, for Wordpress user. A PhD student at Center for Advanced Study and Institute for Theoretical Computer Science, Tsinghua University, Zhiqiang Zhang had created a plugin for Wordpress, called Latex for Wordpress. This plugin uses LaTeX code to generate images. Although the plugin uses the Wordpress public LaTeX server, a local LaTeX service such as MimeTex is preferable, in case the public server is down. Some Web hosting support MimeTeX by default.

With this plugin, adding Maths notation is as easy as adding the LaTeX code. For example, for displaying an inline math equation, use
\$\$int_{-infty }^{infty }e^{-x^{2}};dx=sqrt{pi }!\$\$
and, for the math mode, use
\$\$!int_{-infty }^{infty }e^{-x^{2}};dx=sqrt{pi }!\$\$
Notice that there is an exclamation mark "!", just after the second dollar sign.