At work, we have a website where Content Writers submit Math Formulas to a Graphic Artist which makes an IMAGE of the Math Formula, which is in tun put up on the website for visitors to see.
This is a problem for a lot of obvious reasons!!
We would like to improve this outdated approach, and have the following needs…
1.) Content Writers should be able to enter Math Formulas in some type of Editor
2.) Content Writers should be able to edit Math Formulas in some type of Editor
3.) Ideally the Math Formulas would NOT be IMAGES so that they are easier to change, display, better supported across devices, take up less space, and look better than a possibly pixelated images, and so on…
Is there an easy way to achieve all of that on a website using some add-on?
I believe you can do a fair amount with Math Formulas in HTML 4, but since the people writing content are not programmers, this doesn’t really help.
And since our development staff isn’t very sophisticated, writing a UI that would leverage HTML4’s Math capabilities is again not a practical solution.
I thought there were some open-source solutions out there where you could enter a Math Formula and it used vectors or something to draw a dynamic representation that was very well supported across browsers and devices?
Would someone please help educate me on this topic and let me know if there are any ways to accomplish what I described above.
I am looking for an application or add-on that you can plug in and start using to do what I specified above.
Now that solution might use the MathXML specification, but the goal is to find something that is already built. Sorta like those plug in that let you add an Editor to your website like I am typing in right now with formatting capabilities and so on.
Why not write one? eg. symbol image form buttons that enter the unicode into the edit textarea.
Heck, if nothing like that is out there already (which I highly suspect is the case - not an overwhelming demand) you could stand to earn yourself some $$ and/or renown for your efforts.
That is a possibility, but this is for work and I’m trying to be the hero - as the Business Systems Analyst - and find an already existing solution to this problem instead of telling the Developers, “You go figure it out!” (Our Development Team isn’t very strong, because if they were they would have already taken your advice!)
As far as demand, I disagree.
I bet you there is a pretty large Math & Science population in the world that could benefit from such an add-on or application.
I’ll keep searching, but was just hoping someone here knew of something obvious.
Whatever you do, don’t use MathML or use images to show off your equations. That was the best way five or so years ago but the Internet has moved on since then and now there are some great solutions that use JavaScript.
In the case of your development team you’ll need to learn LaTeX, which is something you should know if you’ve ever worked in academia or work regularly with equations as LaTeX is the preferred method of writing up academic papers. For basic equations it won’t take long at all for your dev team to pick up LaTeX and before long you’ll be able to embed reusable equations on your site.
MathJax is so far ahead of everything else that it’s almost pointless going with anything else unless you need to support instances where users require a solution when JS is turned off.
