I realised that there is some ppchtex macros in the tetex distribution of debian which would allow to generate structural formulas of chemical compounds.
Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?
I believe that would be a great feature especially for wikipedia.
thanks --tic
Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?
WikiTeX supports not only PPCH-TeX, but XyMTeX as well; see:
http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Chem
What's the consensus on WikiTeX in 1.4, btw?
-- Peter Danenberg . wikisophia.org ..:
On Oct 16, 2004, at 5:51 PM, Peter Danenberg wrote:
Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?
WikiTeX supports not only PPCH-TeX, but XyMTeX as well;see: http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Chem
What's the consensus on WikiTeX in 1.4, btw?
What would there be a consensus about? It's an extension, not part of the core distribution.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Thank you for your work Peter. It's really cool. I'll use it.
BTW about you wanting to integrate wikitex permanently into mediawiki. Since mediawiki is about to become _really_ popular for different wikis it will be important to keep installation hurdles as low as possible because when folks install it on rented webspaces with database and php enabled they still won't be able to use tex or wikitex at all. And they will start complaining about that stuff not running and you will have to explain a million times why.
Instead if we can get wikitex from mediawiki cvs server for separate installation in the extensions folder everybody will be happy. And that's where math/ too belongs in my opinion (but that's where it is for historical reasons i suppose). Installing tex may be not that difficult with most distributions but dvi2bitmap you gotta compile and it's not trivial (even though it is easy :-) ) and you need to know where to get which libraries from. BTW you should write the move from gif to png into your README because only found the entry in the changelog after heavy grepping :-)
I just wonder why wikitex is not enabled on wikipedia? I'm shure people are missing it as badly as I was missing it.
--tic
Am Sat, 16 Oct 2004 17:51:22 -0700 hat Peter Danenberg danenberg@mitdasein.com geschrieben:
Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?
WikiTeX supports not only PPCH-TeX, but XyMTeX as well;see:
http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#ChemWhat's the consensus on WikiTeX in 1.4, btw?
-- Peter Danenberg . wikisophia.org ..: _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Ah yes I forgot to mention.
Now I remember heavy discussions about how easy the syntax of wikimarkup has to be to be understood by the contributors so as not to scare them of wikipedia. And it's quit right. It has to be simple because many just wouldn't have the time or devotion to invest in a steep learning curve.
But for things like math or wikitex this discussion appears a bit _childish_ (sorry didn't find a better term) for folks who are going to construct structural formulas or care about feynman diagrams not only often speak more then one or two languages but are also capable of handling even more challenging tasks. So I don't think it of real importance what tags look like. Also, it might be a cool thing to use curly braces on an english layout but on a german one it's a real pain in the a.. to type them all the time and < > are much more convenient.
What I wanted to say: Always look on the bright side of live :-)
--tic
Am Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:57:13 +0200 hat tic@tictric.net tic@tictric.net geschrieben:
Thank you for your work Peter. It's really cool. I'll use it.
BTW about you wanting to integrate wikitex permanently into mediawiki. Since mediawiki is about to become _really_ popular for different wikis it will be important to keep installation hurdles as low as possible because when folks install it on rented webspaces with database and php enabled they still won't be able to use tex or wikitex at all. And they will start complaining about that stuff not running and you will have to explain a million times why.
Instead if we can get wikitex from mediawiki cvs server for separate installation in the extensions folder everybody will be happy. And that's where math/ too belongs in my opinion (but that's where it is for historical reasons i suppose). Installing tex may be not that difficult with most distributions but dvi2bitmap you gotta compile and it's not trivial (even though it is easy :-) ) and you need to know where to get which libraries from. BTW you should write the move from gif to png into your README because only found the entry in the changelog after heavy grepping :-)
I just wonder why wikitex is not enabled on wikipedia? I'm shure people are missing it as badly as I was missing it.
--tic
Am Sat, 16 Oct 2004 17:51:22 -0700 hat Peter Danenberg danenberg@mitdasein.com geschrieben:
Unfortunately texvc doesn't recognise \startchemical Is there an _easy_ way to get it working?
WikiTeX supports not only PPCH-TeX, but XyMTeX as well;see:
http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#ChemWhat's the consensus on WikiTeX in 1.4, btw?
-- Peter Danenberg . wikisophia.org ..: _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Installing tex may be not that difficult with most distributions but dvi2bitmap you gotta compile and it's not trivial
Noted; we're likely migrating to a commoner utility: dvipng or ImageMagick. That should eliminate a step.
BTW you should write the move from gif to png into your README
Good point; it'll be featured prominently in the upcoming version.
I just wonder why wikitex is not enabled on wikipedia?
We hope to work that out presently.
-- Peter Danenberg . wikisophia.org ..:
Sorry for repeating my request, but my first e-mail didn't lead to any responses - though any comment, either via mailing list or at the wikispecies village pump would be most welcome. At the bottom of this message is my last e-mail; please comment the feasibility of the proposal.
Thank you,
Benedikt
Wikispecies.org: As the initial brainstorming on the village pump goes on, one thing becomes clear: wikispecies has the potential to attract many people who would not contribute to a general encyclopedia, but would to a scientific database. As wikispecies will strictly suppress any forking from wikipedia, I thought about an approach that would allow us to use the pool of species-folks for wikipedia.
The tasks: 1.) Wikispecies provides an interface (already at www.wikispecies.org) with templates for different categories (such as "synonymes", "habitat", "morphology" etc.)
2.) These categories represent a table that can be accessed by wikipedia and wikispecies
3.) Wikispecies, which have an emphasis on things like "synonymes" or "original species description" will display these categories on a high order
4.) Wikipedia will display the information that seems interesting for the user of a general encyclopedia in an order that seems appropriate for that purpose
As I don't understand the underlying technical questions, I would like to know if this is technically feasible and - more important - who would volunteer to set up a database that would work as proposed.
On the technical side, I think we're down to one of three courses of action: * Work on my proof-of-principle data management thingy that's in CVS * Wait for a "real", carefully planned wikidata solution to emerge * Write a pure database management software, independent of MediaWiki, and then use it as a plugin
Let the flamewars ignite!
Magnus
Benedikt Mandl wrote:
Sorry for repeating my request, but my first e-mail didn't lead to any responses - though any comment, either via mailing list or at the wikispecies village pump would be most welcome. At the bottom of this message is my last e-mail; please comment the feasibility of the proposal.
Thank you,
Benedikt
Wikispecies.org: As the initial brainstorming on the village pump goes on, one thing becomes clear: wikispecies has the potential to attract many people who would not contribute to a general encyclopedia, but would to a scientific database. As wikispecies will strictly suppress any forking from wikipedia, I thought about an approach that would allow us to use the pool of species-folks for wikipedia.
The tasks: 1.) Wikispecies provides an interface (already at www.wikispecies.org) with templates for different categories (such as "synonymes", "habitat", "morphology" etc.)
2.) These categories represent a table that can be accessed by wikipedia and wikispecies
3.) Wikispecies, which have an emphasis on things like "synonymes" or "original species description" will display these categories on a high order
4.) Wikipedia will display the information that seems interesting for the user of a general encyclopedia in an order that seems appropriate for that purpose
As I don't understand the underlying technical questions, I would like to know if this is technically feasible and - more important - who would volunteer to set up a database that would work as proposed.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org