Displaying Equations on the Web.

A rather incomplete art.

 

The lecture files use both graphics and equations. The graphics will all be converted to GIF or JPEG and will display in just about any browser. Equations are much more tricky.

My first assumption is that I will be putting the pages together with MS Word, because that is one of the few programs that works well with MathType. I know that Word makes rather “ugly” html code, which is true, however, any other program would mean a lot more work for me.

There are a number of solutions to display mathematical equations, all of them have draw backs:

1. Use MathML
   
    This is native to Netscape 7+ and Mozilla 1.1+ (but you have to install some extra fonts.) It is one of the best solutions if you have one of these browsers installed.
2. Use MathPlayer
   
    This is a plugin (you have to download) for IExplorer 5+, which you will have to install. Once installed, it does a decent job displaying the equations.
3. Use the “TechExplorer”, which will display TeX directly. From the writers point of view this is very nice, however, this piece of software does not always install (at all!) on all systems.
4. Convert the equations to GIFs. This does not look as good as direct rendering, but it will work with moth browsers.
5. Convert the whole document to pdf. This means you need to run acrobat to view the document. It has the advantage that the page will display well.

 

Here is the test equation: