6 ms·

Shown HN: texit - Embed LaTeX anywhere on the web

67 points by zachlatta 13y ago

adiM 13y ago
What is the advantage of rendering math as images when Mathjax works reasonably well on all modern browsers.
- lutusp 13y ago
  I agree. MathJax renders this both pointless and outdated. All my recent articles use MathJax and I wouldn't dream of going back to graphics for equation rendering.
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    Don't be mean. Calling someone's work "pointless and outdated" when they were looking forward to featuring it on HN is just brutal.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > Calling someone's work "pointless and outdated" when they were looking forward to featuring it on HN is just brutal. Yes, like reality. Maybe the OP will use his natural gifts to think of a way to answer brutality with creativity. That will prepare him for a more direct experience of reality, the kind where people pay you for your work, not because they're compelled to do so, but because they have no choice -- they want what you have, and you deserve to be compensated.
      - shadowfox 13y ago
        > Yes, like reality Somehow everyone thinks their opinion is reality.
        lutusp 13y ago
        >> Yes, like reality > Somehow everyone thinks their opinion is reality. It's not an opinion. Investors and customers are a better measure of reality than a charitable remark might lead one to believe.
  - corey 13y ago
    This isn't pointless, as it allows you to easily post latex equations on any site that allows images.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      Yes, true, but isn't this project meant to populate a Website's pages with equations? There are any number of easy ways to create equation images solely for export to an image site, example http://arachnoid.com/latex http://arachnoid.com/latex . But populating Web pages for display is a different issue, and the fact that modern browsers allow zooming in and out, essentially ruins the appearance of graphic equations.
- traeblain 13y ago
  This would mainly be used for posting to sites that allow images but not custom javascript. If you run your own site and can use MathJax, then you are fine but for others that cannot include the javascript (comments systems, social sites, etc.) this would be a nice alternative.
  - dunham 13y ago
    MathJax's HTML+CSS rendering looks much nicer than an image to me. I wish there was a way to run it on an HTML document in a batch fashion. (e.g. for generating an epub file)
    - lrem 13y ago
      Have you looked into pandoc?
- zachlatta 13y ago
  Mathjax is great when applicable. My team and I built texit to allow us to take notes in Markdown, rather than writing them in pure LaTeX.
  - mkl 13y ago
    IPython notebooks already do that, with MathJax, plots, symbolic algebra, and full programming support too. What you've done is neat - I am all in favour of remaking things for fun (working on a grep clone...) - but it does seem like better alternatives already exist.
  - L_Rahman 13y ago
    As someone who really enjoys taking notes in Markdown, and prefers it over most other alternatives, this is appreciated. Thanks for making this. I look forward to using it in class tomorrow.
  - clintonc 13y ago
    http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ may be your best friend, in this case :) Here you can write in markdown and include TeX, thereafter converting to many different formats (using, for example, mimeTeX, MathJax, etc).
cheeaun 13y ago
This uses Mathjax: http://www.texpaste.com/ http://www.texpaste.com/
slig 13y ago
Can this be used as a full replacement of Google Chart Tool? [1] [1] https://developers.google.com/chart/image/ https://developers.google.com/chart/image/
plg 13y ago
1. This is awesome. Could be really useful. 2. I'm not sure I would ever put it inside any of my web stuff however, because what happens when the service goes down, or disappears?
- arctangent1759 13y ago
  We're thinking about adding a system where you can associate your TeX images with a key, from which you can download all images associated with your project. It's in the pipeline, though. ;P
shark234 13y ago
This is good! Would be great if it supports somehow retina display, maybe returning 2x size? Good job!
- zachlatta 13y ago
  We're experimenting with SVG support. As long as you're not specifying an extension when linking to texit, you should automatically be switched over to SVGs once they're implemented.
  - stanonyime 13y ago
    SVG support will be awesome. I've been trying to convert all my LaTex equations to svg for use in a desktop app. Looking forward to this
clintonc 13y ago
This does a couple of things -- rendering TeX, and plotting graphs. As has been pointed out, [MathJax](http://www.mathjax.org/ http://www.mathjax.org/) is really excellent, has thorough support for many of the TeX-isms which you may ever need, and is really simple to include by CDN. I suppose that the competition here is really [mimeTeX](http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html), since they both operate on the server-side, but MathJax is so very nice... The plotting is interesting. These are REALLY basic plots, but I do not know of any other web service out there which implements plotting functionality on the server side. (There seem to be a few defunct gnuplot services; I cannot find a working one.) There are many client-side libraries for charts, but none which concentrate on plotting functions. I'm glad to see it here, but I would like to see it improved as well.
lelf 13y ago
http://latex.codecogs.com/svg.latex?\forall\alpha.(K_1^1[\alpha/S]\rightarrow\dots\rightarrow\alpha)\dots\rightarrow(K_1^m[\alpha/S]\rightarrow\dots\rightarrow\alpha)\rightarrow\alpha http://latex.codecogs.com/svg.latex?\forall\alpha.(K_1^1[\al... PS: It's $\LaTeX$, using $word$ is always wrong. And axis labes x and y should be in math italics. Anyway it's just plain ugly, different fonts, formulae jumping from baseline etc. Use mathjax
ismaelc 13y ago
http://www.mashape.com/community/texit http://www.mashape.com/community/texit
mrcactu5 13y ago
Accessing LaTeX graphics features directly is really cool,I would just use numpy and d3.js or flotr or something. Why not use the MathJaX CDN directly? I even wrote an IDE (basically stolen from MathOverflow) to type markdown and have it render on the web. Sacrifice control of paragraph sizing etc.
bpedro 13y ago
WordPress can render LaTeX since I can remember. Example: - http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=\displaystyle%20w_{a,u}=\frac{\sum_{i=1}^m(r_{a,i}-\bar{r_a})\times(r_{u,i}-bar{r_u})}{\sigma_a\times\sigma_u}&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=3 http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=\displaystyle%20w_{a,... - or a simpler one: http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=\frac{\pi}{2}&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=3 http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=\frac{\pi}{2}&bg=ffff...

67 points by zachlatta 13y ago

adiM 13y ago

What is the advantage of rendering math as images when Mathjax works reasonably well on all modern browsers.

lutusp 13y ago
I agree. MathJax renders this both pointless and outdated. All my recent articles use MathJax and I wouldn't dream of going back to graphics for equation rendering.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  Don't be mean. Calling someone's work "pointless and outdated" when they were looking forward to featuring it on HN is just brutal.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Calling someone's work "pointless and outdated" when they were looking forward to featuring it on HN is just brutal. Yes, like reality. Maybe the OP will use his natural gifts to think of a way to answer brutality with creativity. That will prepare him for a more direct experience of reality, the kind where people pay you for your work, not because they're compelled to do so, but because they have no choice -- they want what you have, and you deserve to be compensated.
    - shadowfox 13y ago
      > Yes, like reality Somehow everyone thinks their opinion is reality.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        >> Yes, like reality > Somehow everyone thinks their opinion is reality. It's not an opinion. Investors and customers are a better measure of reality than a charitable remark might lead one to believe.
- corey 13y ago
  This isn't pointless, as it allows you to easily post latex equations on any site that allows images.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    Yes, true, but isn't this project meant to populate a Website's pages with equations? There are any number of easy ways to create equation images solely for export to an image site, example http://arachnoid.com/latex http://arachnoid.com/latex . But populating Web pages for display is a different issue, and the fact that modern browsers allow zooming in and out, essentially ruins the appearance of graphic equations.
traeblain 13y ago
This would mainly be used for posting to sites that allow images but not custom javascript. If you run your own site and can use MathJax, then you are fine but for others that cannot include the javascript (comments systems, social sites, etc.) this would be a nice alternative.
- dunham 13y ago
  MathJax's HTML+CSS rendering looks much nicer than an image to me. I wish there was a way to run it on an HTML document in a batch fashion. (e.g. for generating an epub file)
  - lrem 13y ago
    Have you looked into pandoc?
zachlatta 13y ago
Mathjax is great when applicable. My team and I built texit to allow us to take notes in Markdown, rather than writing them in pure LaTeX.
- mkl 13y ago
  IPython notebooks already do that, with MathJax, plots, symbolic algebra, and full programming support too. What you've done is neat - I am all in favour of remaking things for fun (working on a grep clone...) - but it does seem like better alternatives already exist.
- L_Rahman 13y ago
  As someone who really enjoys taking notes in Markdown, and prefers it over most other alternatives, this is appreciated. Thanks for making this. I look forward to using it in class tomorrow.
- clintonc 13y ago
  http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ may be your best friend, in this case :) Here you can write in markdown and include TeX, thereafter converting to many different formats (using, for example, mimeTeX, MathJax, etc).

cheeaun 13y ago

This uses Mathjax: http://www.texpaste.com/ http://www.texpaste.com/

slig 13y ago

Can this be used as a full replacement of Google Chart Tool? [1] [1] https://developers.google.com/chart/image/ https://developers.google.com/chart/image/

plg 13y ago

1. This is awesome. Could be really useful. 2. I'm not sure I would ever put it inside any of my web stuff however, because what happens when the service goes down, or disappears?

arctangent1759 13y ago
We're thinking about adding a system where you can associate your TeX images with a key, from which you can download all images associated with your project. It's in the pipeline, though. ;P

shark234 13y ago

This is good! Would be great if it supports somehow retina display, maybe returning 2x size? Good job!

zachlatta 13y ago
We're experimenting with SVG support. As long as you're not specifying an extension when linking to texit, you should automatically be switched over to SVGs once they're implemented.
- stanonyime 13y ago
  SVG support will be awesome. I've been trying to convert all my LaTex equations to svg for use in a desktop app. Looking forward to this

clintonc 13y ago

This does a couple of things -- rendering TeX, and plotting graphs. As has been pointed out, [MathJax](http://www.mathjax.org/ http://www.mathjax.org/) is really excellent, has thorough support for many of the TeX-isms which you may ever need, and is really simple to include by CDN. I suppose that the competition here is really [mimeTeX](http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html), since they both operate on the server-side, but MathJax is so very nice... The plotting is interesting. These are REALLY basic plots, but I do not know of any other web service out there which implements plotting functionality on the server side. (There seem to be a few defunct gnuplot services; I cannot find a working one.) There are many client-side libraries for charts, but none which concentrate on plotting functions. I'm glad to see it here, but I would like to see it improved as well.

lelf 13y ago

http://latex.codecogs.com/svg.latex?\forall\alpha.(K_1^1[\alpha/S]\rightarrow\dots\rightarrow\alpha)\dots\rightarrow(K_1^m[\alpha/S]\rightarrow\dots\rightarrow\alpha)\rightarrow\alpha http://latex.codecogs.com/svg.latex?\forall\alpha.(K_1^1[\al... PS: It's $\LaTeX$, using $word$ is always wrong. And axis labes x and y should be in math italics. Anyway it's just plain ugly, different fonts, formulae jumping from baseline etc. Use mathjax

ismaelc 13y ago

http://www.mashape.com/community/texit http://www.mashape.com/community/texit

mrcactu5 13y ago

Accessing LaTeX graphics features directly is really cool,I would just use numpy and d3.js or flotr or something. Why not use the MathJaX CDN directly? I even wrote an IDE (basically stolen from MathOverflow) to type markdown and have it render on the web. Sacrifice control of paragraph sizing etc.

bpedro 13y ago

WordPress can render LaTeX since I can remember. Example: - http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=\displaystyle%20w_{a,u}=\frac{\sum_{i=1}^m(r_{a,i}-\bar{r_a})\times(r_{u,i}-bar{r_u})}{\sigma_a\times\sigma_u}&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=3 http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=\displaystyle%20w_{a,... - or a simpler one: http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=\frac{\pi}{2}&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=3 http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=\frac{\pi}{2}&bg=ffff...