For a hosted math Mimetex is a proven open source solution (<a href="http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html</a>).<p>Mimetex is a web-based program that generates LaTeX images (math) on the fly, if you use it like this: <img src="<a href="http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mimetex.cgi?c=\sqrt{a^2+b^2}"" rel="nofollow">http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mimetex.cgi?c=\sqrt{a^2+b^2...</a> alt="" border=0 align=middle>.<p>To do a plugin that does [tex]\sqrt{a^2+b^2}[\tex] is simple (PHP).<p><pre><code> $text = preg_replace('/\[tex\](.*?)\[\/tex\]/ie',
"'<img src=\"/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?'.rawurlencode('$1').'\"
align=\"middle\" />'", $text);
</code></pre>
To do something like this with JavaScript is also trivial.<p>Mimetex is great beause A) you don't need to have a full TeX installation on your server, the program generates it internally B) you don't need to worry about scalability - mimetex can be compiled with caching enables, which makes it the same as static images
A similar idea is this firefox plugin, TeX the World: <a href="http://thewe.net/tex/" rel="nofollow">http://thewe.net/tex/</a><p>Pros:
- Works on any site (I've only checked it out in gchat though).<p>Cons:
- Not as pretty (if it matters to you) and requires both sides to d/l firefox extension really (not for emails though).
That's a cool idea. So cool that I was thinking of writing it myself.<p>I really like the code-creating buttons and reference page. They make it faster and easier.<p>The equations seem to be displayed a bit small though. My test paste (<a href="http://mathbin.net/4315" rel="nofollow">http://mathbin.net/4315</a>) doesn't go that deep into fractionage and the like, but it's already a little hard to read some of it.<p>Then I did a deeply-fractioned 1 (but not so deep as to be ridiculous) and the e is barely legible.
Also check: <a href="http://www.pastemath.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.pastemath.com</a> and a plugin for msn messenger: <a href="http://gallery.live.com/liveitemdetail.aspx?li=fc6c54f3-fa61-42ca-8fd2-6bae407f1de3&l=6" rel="nofollow">http://gallery.live.com/liveitemdetail.aspx?li=fc6c54f3-fa61...</a>