WordPress Math Publisher Plugin Support

Ron Fredericks writes: This is just a short post to point my readers to a new mathematics publishing plugin available from ECI’s Blog Center. This plugin offers a simple alternative to the more standard approaches: XML’s MathML and Math into LaTeX.

WordPress Math Publisher plugin home page
www.embeddedcomponents.com/wordpress/wpmathpub/

Usage

An example of how it can be used is your blog posts:

WordPress code…
[pmath size=16](a^2+b^2)=a^2+2ab+b^2[/pmath]
where:
[pmath size=12]~a[/pmath] is defined as a
[pmath size=12]~b[/pmath] is defined as b

Results in:

(a^2+b^2)=a^2+2ab+b^2

where:
~a is defined as a
~b is defined as b

References:
  Pascal Brachet’s phpmathpublisher
    Home: www.xm1math.net/phpmathpublisher/
    Usage: www.xm1math.net/phpmathpublisher/doc/help.html
  Matteo Bertini’s WordPress plugin called PHP Math Publisher
    www.slug.it/naufraghi/programmazione-web/wpmathpublisher
  Randy Morrow’s WordPress plugin called Axiom
    wordpress.org/extend/plugins/axiom/#post-2794

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9 Responses to “WordPress Math Publisher Plugin Support”

  1. LectureMaker Says:

    How to Display Math Symbols in WordPress…

    Ron Fredericks writes: Have you ever wanted to include math equations in your blog posts or lecture materials?  Here is an easy and slick way to get the job done.  Use Embedded Components new WordPress plugin called WordPress Math Publisher, or wp…

  2. Ron Fredericks Says:

    The difference between MathML, LaTeX, and PHP Math Publisher…

    Each of these methods may be used to display mathematical equations on a web page. Both MathML and LaTeX follow standards that have communities of users around them. Unfortunately they both require some significant overhead to use and/or view.

    My new plugin called WordPress Math Pub, is based on the PHP Math Publisher library by Pascal Brachet. MathML and LaTeX are not used. This library is an open-source library that converts plain text into image links to mathematical PNG images. The PHP Math Publisher library is a relatively new method for publishing mathematic equations and symbols. It has its own simple text-based syntax that is easy to learn and embed into any web page. New math images are created automatically on the fly from within your WordPress main loop as needed during content display.

  3. rjmatm Says:

    Sorry for not getting back to you. I’ve been out of the loop for a while. The thing with word press is the it’s tough for me to figure out how to post the plug-in on their site. I want to give my plug-in away for free (Free Software style). So please don’t think I’m hiding, I’ve just been having trouble with subversion.

    Randy

  4. Ron Fredericks Says:

    Hi Randy:

    Here were the steps I took to complete my WordPress plugin:

    1) Prepare the special readme.txt with wiki markdown tags such that the WordPress landing page has all content needed: description, installation, FAQ, screenshots, other notes.

    2) Follow their SVN beginners guide to stuffing the trunk subdirectory on my local PC with all my plugin code. I had two problems with this initially:

    a) This plugin requires the use of an img/ subdirectory that must be on the blogger’s system, but empty subdirectories are ignored (during the download process by a new user trying to aquire my plugin) unless you load something in there. So I put a dummy image in the img/ directory just so users will get that directory. I included the directory structure in my screenshots to help new users quickly understand the details surrounding my plugin, in case they forgot to upload all supporting files and subdirectories onto their server:
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpmathpub/screenshots/

    b) When I tried to commit my initial code to the WordPress repository, several errors were encountered by the SVN CI command. The only help I found was a reference on some site “that an engineer should not upload too much code at once or problems may occur” – and yup problems did occur. To solve these errors, I repeated a series of “stat, del, cp, and ci” statements (not always in that order), until the stat command gave no errors. Then I did a download from my new wordpress.org landing page to see what files I was missing as a result of my “get rid of the SVN errors at all cost” technique. I then did one more round of cp, stat, and ci SVN commands to complete the process.

    I hope that helps,

    Ron

  5. Roderik Says:

    I tried the plugin but it interferes somewhat with the editor (both tinymce as well as fckeditor). The

  6. Ron Fredericks Says:

    Hi Roderik:

    Can you provide some detail on how wpmathpub plugin interferes with your use of the editors?

    So far the only issue has been in the use of greater than “>” and less than “<" symbols - as these are converted by html aware editors to "& gt;" and "& lt;". This conversion of html symbols can be circumvented by switching from "edit" mode to "code" mode. Bes regards, Ron

  7. Roderik Says:

    Switching to code mode does not circumvent it for me. When you edit in code, click save and check what is there, < and > were inserted. The only way might be to turn of the visual editor as a whole in the user settings. However that is quite annoying since I want to write the articles itself in the visual editor.
    I think it might work if you write a filter for wordpress that converts the html encoded characters if they are inside a math block.

  8. Roderik Says:

    & lt; and & gt; instead of in last message

  9. Ron Fredericks Says:

    Hi Roderik:

    Thank you for your polite and accurate feedback.

    I agree with you that it should be fairly simple to implement the html entities replacement – as you suggest above. I will use our conversation here to drive the next release. It will take me a week or so to get back to this project with a formal update release on the wordpress.org site.

    Ron

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