LatexRender (primarily for SLAM)

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-02-27 08:26am

This is really directed at Mike, since he's the only person who could possibly implement this, but I've noticed that in some SLAM discussions there are quite a bit of maths involved and the posters in question have resorted to using TeX markup to describe the expressions and equations in question. After looking around a bit, I found a series of scripts called LatexRender that rasterize LaTeX output for use with phpBB.

If it doesn't require too much time or server resources, it might be a useful addition,.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-03-23 10:42am

Bump ... any thoughts on this proposal?

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2006-03-23 07:01pm

Sounds like a good idea to me (if it isn't too much trouble). It looks like the generated pictures are about the size of an avatar, so it shouldn't be too bad for bandwidth. Testing may be required to confirm or deny that, though.

Of course, there could be instances of people making mistakes and directly hitting Submit instead of Preview, and not being able to edit their code. On the other hand, I suspect most people that want to use it will be sure to Preview first, and the rest could potentially be cleaned up by a passing mod if the person does a ghetto-edit to fix the code.

CmdrWilkens · Post by **CmdrWilkens** » 2006-03-27 01:33am

I'd say essentially the same thing, if it won't hog too much in terms of server resources and time to install then it might certainly be worth it. We'd probably have to write a new help section to prime folks for using it (or at least link to a site for using it) but that would be a rather simple addition compared against actually adding the code I would think. Sitll given that it was originally designed for phpBBB (so sayeth the site) I can't imagine it would hog up that much.

CmdrWilkens · Post by **CmdrWilkens** » 2006-03-27 11:42pm

Addendum apparently I've already got volunteer's for writing a potential help section/FAQ/primer should we go forward with this. Given that the only real hold up would be what the code would do to the bandwidth or speed on the server and I can't answer those questions.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-04-02 11:55am

I'm no technical expert, so I have no idea how difficult LatexRender would be to implement, but I'd like to second phongn's proposal; given that mathematics comes up on a fairly regular basis in SLAM as part of discussions on physics and pure mathematics (the latter discussions are frequent, but far more symbol-intensive), the capability to render LaTeX strikes me as being quite convenient in terms of immediately understanding the mathematics a person is using in his post.

I would also be willing to help write any potential help section or FAQ for LaTeX, though my knowledge on the subject doesn't extend far beyond the basic symbols.