On 7/31/02 3:20 PM, "Jens Frank" JeLuF@gmx.de wrote:
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?
We should see what PlanetMath is doing/work with them. They're a GFDL math-encyclopedia using TeX and some interesting back-end software. There's no need for us to reinvent the wheel if not necessary.