-------------------------------------------------------------------------- March 6, 2009 Version 1.02 m a t h T e X R e a d m e F i l e Copyright(c) 2007-2009, John Forkosh Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- by: John Forkosh john@forkosh.com www.forkosh.com This file is part of mathTeX, which is free software. You may redistribute and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later, as published by the Free Software Foundation. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html mathTeX is discussed and illustrated online by the mathTeX manual at its homepage http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html Or you can follow the Installation instructions in Section II below to immediately install mathTeX on your own server. I. INTRODUCTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MathTeX, licensed under the GPL, is a cgi program that lets you easily embed LaTeX math in your own html pages, blogs, wikis, etc. It parses a LaTeX math expression and immediately emits the corresponding gif (or png) image, rather than the usual TeX dvi. So just place an html tag in your document wherever you want to see the corresponding LaTeX expression. For example, immediately displays the corresponding gif image wherever you put that tag. There's no inherent need to repeatedly write the cumbersome tag illustrated above. For example, if you're using phpBB3, just click Postings from the Administrator Control Panel, and add the Custom BBCode [tex]{TEXT}[/tex] with the HTML replacement Then users can just type [tex] f(x)=\int_{-\infty}^xe^{-t^2}dt [/tex] in their posts to see a gif image of the enclosed expression. MathTeX uses the latex and dvipng programs, along with all necessary fonts, etc, from your TeX distribution. If dvipng is not available, you can compile mathTeX to use dvips from your TeX distribution, and convert from the ImageMagick package, instead. Links to online sources for all these dependencies are on http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html and several are listed below. II. INSTALLATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note: The current release of mathTeX only runs under Unix-like operating systems. To compile and install mathTeX on your own Unix server... +--- | Install mathTeX's dependencies and download mathTeX +---------------------------------------------------- * First, make sure you have a recent LaTeX distribution http://www.latex-project.org/ftp.html installed on your server. Ask your ISP or sysadmin if you have any installation problems or questions. Or see http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html if you can't install latex. Besides latex, mathTeX uses dvipng, which recent LaTeX distributions typically include. If you can't install dvipng, see http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html for instructions to use dvips and convert instead of dvipng. * Then, download http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mathtex.zip and unzip mathtex.zip in any convenient working directory. Your working directory should now contain mathtex.zip your downloaded gnu zipped mathTeX distribution README this file (see mathtex.html for demo/tutorial) COPYING GPL license, under which you may use mathTeX mathtex.c mathTeX source program and all functions mathtex.html mathTeX users manual +--- | Compile and Install mathTeX +---------------------------- * To compile an executable that emits default gif images cc mathtex.c -DLATEX=\"$(which latex)\" \ -DDVIPNG=\"$(which dvipng)\" \ -o mathtex.cgi For default png images, add the -DPNG switch. Additional command-line switches that you may find useful are discussed at http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html * Finally, mv mathtex.cgi to your server's cgi-bin/ directory, chmod its permissions as necessary (typically 755), making sure mathtex.cgi can rw files in cgi-bin/, and you're all done. +--- | Test installed image +--------------------- * To quickly test your installed mathtex.cgi, type a url into your browser's locator window something like http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/mathtex.cgi?x^2+y^2 which should display the same image that you see at http://www.forkosh.com/cgi-bin/mathtex.cgi?x^2+y^2 If you see the same image from your own domain link, then you've completed a successful mathTeX installation. * Optionally, to install a copy of the mathTeX manual on your server, mv mathtex.html to your server's htdocs/ directory. And, if the relative path from htdocs to cgi-bin isn't ../cgi-bin, then edit mathtex.html and change the few dozen occurrences as necessary. Now, http://www.yourdomain.com/mathtex.html should display your own copy of the mathTeX manual. Any problems with the above? Read the more detailed instructions on mathTeX's homepage http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html III. REVISION HISTORY ------------------------------------------------------------------------ See http://www.forkosh.com/mathtexchangelog.html for a detailed discussion of mathTeX revisions. o 11 Oct 2007 -- mathTeX version 1.00 released. o 12 Oct 2007 -- optional \usepackage[arg]{package} argument now recognized correctly (initial release neglected to handle optional [arg] following \usepackage). o 12 Oct 2007 -- html &#nnn; now translated during preprocessing, e.g., [ or [ becomes [ (left square bracket) before it's submitted to latex. o 12 Oct 2007 -- special mathTeX directives like \time are now checked for proper command termination, i.e., non-alpha character. (In particular, LaTeX \times had been incorrectly interpreted as mathTeX \time followed by an s.) o 12 Oct 2007 -- url "unescape" translation, i.e., %20-to-blank, etc, repeated (done twice) for
input. (I'm not sure why this is necessary, and can't reproduce the problem myself, but am acting on seemingly reliable reports.) o 20 Oct 2007 -- removed leading and trailing pairs of $$...$$'s from input expressions, interpreting $...$ as \textstyle and $$...$$ as \displaystyle (and $$$...$$$ as \parstyle). Also removed leading and trailing \[...\], interpreting it as \displaystyle. (Note: \displaystyle is mathTeX's default, so $$...$$'s or \[...\] are unnecessary. But some people submit expressions containing them, so they're now interpreted.) o 16 Feb 2008 -- more robust test to display the correct error message when a required dependency isn't installed. (Occasionally, the "ran but failed" message was emitted when a dependency was actually "not installed".) o 16 Feb 2008 -- -DDENYREFERER=\"string\" or -DDENYREFERER=\"string1,string2,etc\" compile switch added. If compiled with it, mathTeX won't render images for HTTP_REFERER's containing string (or string1 or string2, etc) as a substring of their url's. o 17 Feb 2008 -- updated (slightly) documentation o 18 Feb 2008 -- mathTeX version 1.01 released. o 05 Mar 2009 -- \environment directive added to display all http environment variables. o 06 Mar 2009 -- mathTeX version 1.02 released. IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I hope you find mathTeX useful. If so, a contribution to your country's TeX Users Group, or to the GNU project, is suggested, especially if you're a company that's currently profitable. ========================= END-OF-FILE README ===========================