Mathematics tools

Many schools and hosted sites have the same problem but it is possible to use external tex renderers like MathTran, cgi Mimetex or google chart api tex with filter or javascripts or for example asciimathml even if you site had no latex at all.

For example Mathtran has a good documentation in http://www.mathtran.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page and it can be used either with filter http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=916 or with javascript (theme)

One problem with javascripts is of course that they won't work if javascripts are disabled in browser - yet javascripts don't require any software or checking of permissions, executing of server side commands etc.

You can also use commercial tools like Wiris.

My main interest has been to develop new free open source tools and plugins for all such sites that can't use TeX locally and test plugins for editors have been working pretty well. They should be available before Christmas for all versions of moodle and both for HTMLArea and TinyMCE and all current main renderers - both for maths and graphs. The main problem with all renderers is that they all have some custom syntax that does not work the same way in other renderers - roots and matrices for example, spaces, colors, text sizes, custom symbols and so on.

I am also planning to write code for a math filter that could be used for rendering tex and asciimathml with most current local or external renderers even if javascript is disabled and editors are not available - during the coming weeks.

Check attached test.html as an example and test adding to your theme meta.php (or header.html) a simple tag like

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://korpelainen.net/js/AM.js"></script>

(copy the script to some folder on your site - it is possible that test site is not the same after some years anymore)

If you read other discussions from math forum it is also important to note that for example Wiki has problems with square brackets [ and ] and asciimathml does have conflicts with smiley code (emotions like : )  or  ( n ) ... but these can be changed either with theme config.php or site settings. That's one of the reasons why I have been using mostly a special Math theme where smileys are not used.

It's always so funny to see or in the middle of equations...

For simple equations you can use plain html and unicode symbols but html has it's limits - but latex and asciimathml have some limitations too.

Example α β γ about simple html:

(a + b)³ = a³ + 3a²b + 3ab² + b³