I haven't changed any <var> tags, though I have created formulae myself with '' around variables, because I'd seen it done like that. The $$ for <var> idea is interesting, but I don't think it will make formulae significantly easier on the eye in raw form.
I don't think that the '' version is easy on the eye either. Easy on the eye would be a limited implementation of TeX that would render the wiki input $$x^2 y = z_1$$ into HTML as <var>x</var><sup>2</sup><var>y</var>?= <var>z</var><sub>1</sub>. But that opens up its own whole new can of worms. OTOH, $$x$$<sup>2</sup>$$y$$?= $$z$$<sub>1</sub> would be an improvement, and $$x$$^^2^^$$y$$?= $$z$$__1__ would be even better. (This won't quite work, since ^^ and __ can't be interpreted as toggles, but I'm not sure how to deal with that right now.)
Hi,
Axel Boldt proposed to have some elegant way to include TeX-formulas into wiki text.
Building an interpreter as mighty as TeX to process formulas is a big task, and using PHP would take very long to parse one formula.
I've hacked the phpwiki code to add a new namespace [[math: ]] so you can write formulas like [[math:a^2+b^2=c^2]] or [[math:\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}\frac{1}{n}=\infty]].
The code will make TeX create an image (PNG) of the formula. Those images will be cached, they will be created only once and will be shared between articles. ( [[math:E=m c^2]] might be used on many pages ).
Processing one formula took about one minute on a very old 486/DX2, why I didn't submit the code to LDC for review or comments, yet.
Do we have numbers of the utilization of the server, whether a feature like this can be added?
Regards,
JeLuF