Re: Permission to commit Latex equation editor?

> On Friday 18 March 2005 15:35, msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
>> > 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.
>>
>> Oh well this is both bad and good. It's great for Linux users who often
>> alreadt have a full-tex environment. It bad for oeople without becaus
>> tetex is huge!
>>
> True, distribution-wise, it is easiest to assume that TeX is already
> installed
> on the user's machine or it is his responsibility. But what TeX4Moz is
> doing
> is simply parsing and converting to MathML, not creating dvi output, and
> certainly nothing after that.
> It does'nt even require any font metric stuff either.
>
> So if you strip things down, all you need is the tex program (~300K on my
> machine) plus the TeX4Moz specific macros.
>
> I'm not suggesting that you seriously consider this option, just pointing
> out
> that you don't need the whole kitchen sink that TeTeX implies.
>

Actually that sounds perfect. If you can comeup with a stripped down Tex
we might even ship it with the plugin.

>> Well there is a little trick you can do with both OOo and AbiWord if you
>> don't mind living without fancy transitions or animations.
>>
>> Set up a page in landscape mode with a custom page size to fit on a
>> screen.
>> Set up your presentation as you like. AbiWord does positioned objects
>> and
>> text wrapping, as well as image backgrounds so you can make your slides
>> quite fancy.
>>
>> Then print to pdf and do your presentation in evince or Acroread.
>>
> great! sounds reasonable.
>
> I was wondering what it would take to make Abiword an embeddable widget
> into
> other programs. I've glanced through the architecture a bit, and it looks
> like you have a nice seperation between the backend and the front-ends for
> various platforms. How hard is it to write a front-end for say a live
> canvas,
> for eg. the inkscape canvas to replace its text tool.
> It may be over-kill for inkscape, but with such an embeddable widget in
> something like Inkscape, you have the foundation for a nice presentation
> canvas, where the text tool does'nt suck like in all the other
> presentation
> tools I have seen. And inkscape gives you a great tool for in-place
> illustration, allowing neat stuff like what 'pstricks' gives in the LaTeX
> world. Just thinking out loud, that's all :)
>
In a netshell it's easy to embed abiword in other apps.

We have "abiwidget" which you can use if you link abiword and run it
in-process and an bonobo view for running out-of-process. You can embed
abiword in any gtk application. It's trvially easy if you use the bonobo
component.

Anyway to try out the bonobo component just down download the sdk with its
example code from our website at:

http://www.abisource.com/developers/sdk/index.phtml

Not that I think the inkscape guys want a word processor in their
application :-)

There is also project called Criawips

http://www.nongnu.org/criawips/

 that is working on a presentation program for gnome-office.

Sven is working getting editting support going now. It might also be
possible use the same technique of connecting gtkmathview virtual canvas
to his drawing model that we use to draw maths in his program.

I know Sven would appreciate all the help that offered to him.

>> BTW, if you have a passion for Tex you could write another plugin to use
>> it instead as well as itex2MML. We can reuse all the infrastructure
>> we've
>> set up. I can show you how.
>>
> I might take you up on the offer someday! I have been thinking about
> writing a
> TeX compatible parser. As I've mentioned in my last email, you pretty much
> have to roll your own hand-written lexer and parser since the lexing and
> parsing rules change on the fly when macros are used. So that precludes
> the
> use of standard tools like flex + bison. Using TeX4Moz would be the quick
> and
> dirty way for now.
>

Well you know where to find us :-)

Cheers

Martin

> Shyjan
>
Received on Fri Mar 18 09:33:54 2005