## Wednesday, November 12, 2008

### More maths stuff

Perhaps this should have been an addition to the previous post...

I've continued to play with ASCIIMathML and I realise I should have given a warning but I've also discovered some cool stuff that you can do.

I should have warned you that ASCIIMathML should work no problem with Firefox (and possibly other browsers) but you need to download a program called mathplayer if you want to see the formulae in Internet Explorer (and possibly other browsers). Also, the ASCIIMathML page says:
The STIX fonts (beta) have finally been released (download and select STIXGeneral as default font in Firefox).
I've not found this to be necessary... but then I've not really pushed ASCIIMathML to try any particularly unusual symbols.

Now for some of the other stuff I discovered while I continued to play with this tool. I was pleasantly surprised to see that ASCIIMathML handles some of the graph drawing elements of LaTeX. For example:

\begin{graph} width=300; height=200; xmin=-1; xmax=1; xscl=1; plot(x*sin(1/x)); \end{graph}

I think that's pretty clever. :-)

Also, in the previous post, I mentioned a couple of programs that can export LaTex, but dgilmour sent me a Tweet that directed me to the Sitmo Equation Editor - a free, online tool that creates LaTeX code which you can copy and paste into your blog for ASCIIMathML to render. Excellent! Other useful pages I came across include the ASCIIMathML.js (ver 2.0): Syntax and List of Constants page (comprehensive but not particularly attractive) and the ASCIIMath Tutorial page (an stunningly useful tutorial that includes areas where you can type code and check straight away how it is rendered).

That's all for now. I don't know about you but I'm feeling a bit Mathed out now. I promise I'll try to stay away from maths for at least the next few weeks. :-)

D^3P said...

check out my math blog at http://www.jds.com/mathematics/math107. it is powered by blogger, and i don't use any javascript to convert because i post straight mathml to my blog. the math in the blog is viewable in both firefox, internet explorer+mathplayer.

Anonymous said...

as for posting mathml in blogger hosted blog, check out my other blog at http://mathmlblogs.blogspot.com

David said...

Thanks for the comments and the links to your pages. From the second post it looks like you have to use IE with the mathsplayer option to see MathML in a Blogger blog. This is a bit tricky for Mac users like me. :-)

Also, I like the name - d cubed p - I'm guessing they are intitals. Perhaps I should have gone for d^2m instead of DavidDMuir. If nothing else, it would have been quicker to type. :-)

D^3P said...

Perhaps at the time you were viewing my second blog at http://mathmlblogs.blogspot.com, I had not implemented some javascript routines, which came bundled with Peter Jipsen's ASCII to MathML script, in the blog. Once implemented, MathML is rendered in both IR+Mathplayer and also Firefox. Please check it out with Firefox, it should work even in Mac.

d^3p looks nice when rendered as Math. :-)

D^3P said...

Sometimes when I say x cubed, I deliberately misprounce it as eggs cubed and when my students start staring at me, I draw the picture of a startled chicken staring at its just laid cubed eggs. And, I sign the drawing as d cubed p. I am not a good artist though. :-)