RE: Permission to commit Latex equation editor?

Hi,

> The webpage for itex2MML is here:

> http://pear.math.pitt.edu/mathzilla/itex2mml.html

> itex2MML is a very small command-line program written is straight C. It
> uses lex and yacc to obtain it's expressive power. It reads latex (well
> rather it's near equivalent itex) on stdin and produces MathML on stdout.

The same webpage also has links to Tex4Moz:

http://pear.math.pitt.edu/mathzilla/tex4moz.html

the advantage of this package over itex2MML is that it uses TeX itself
to convert to MathML (actually XHTML + MathML) and thus able to parse any
(La)Tex expression without modification. The biggest implication is that TeX
macros also work, with the ability to use all those macro packages that people
have written over the years without any change.

BTW, the author of itex2MML claims that Latex has problems being compatible
with MathML. There may be some problems, but if worse comes to worst
TeX is powerful enough for one to write a macro package that mimics itex
syntax!

The itex2MML approach on the other hand cannot be extended as far as I know to
handle macros, since macros (atleast the ones that are as powerful as TeX
where macros can be pretty much any arbitrary rewriting rule you can imagine)
require rewriting the lexical and parsing rules on the fly at run-time, and I
don't think that is possible (correct me if I am wrong) with the standard
tools like yacc.

I am very excited to know that abiword will be including math and more
importantly latex-like support. How easy is it to turn Abiword into a quick
and dirty presentation tool ? Unless Abiword can import Latex formatting and
macros distributed by most conferences and journals, I don't see myself using
it much for word processing, but as a presentation tool, where i can cut'n
paste latex math fragments from my papers, I would be very interested. I have
tried OO Impress, but it can't do inline math (although OO writer can).
  
- shyjan
Received on Fri Mar 18 05:16:47 2005