Forum .LRN Q&A: Latex/Tex Math formula support for dotLRN

Hi all,

we would like to add latex/tex mathematical formula support for dotLRN in general and ETP in particular.

A proof of concept is accessible here:

http://madura.bwl.uni-mannheim.de:8000/math

Next step is to create a service package that an be used from different applications to support latex/tex.

Feedback is more than welcomed.

Greetings,
Nima

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Posted by Andrew Piskorski on
Nima, that's definitely cool, and looks useful. Can you tell us a bit more about how you implemented it? Are you exec'ing latex2html from AOLserver, or what?
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Posted by Don Baccus on
Wow, that IS cool. Hmmm...how about a <formula> template tag? :)
we are on the way to include webeq to ad_form, the same way that htmlarea works ... ;)
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Posted by Abelardo Pardo on
Cool!
It'd be great to use LaTeX to typeset formulas in HTML. Taking Andrew's comment a bit deeper...

Assuming you have some kind of LaTeX engine running underneath, you'd support as many math extensions as the engine has available, right? I'm talking about things like amsmath, amsfont, amssymb, etc.

Same would apply to multiline environments like "split", "align", "gather", etc. right?

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Posted by Ricard Garrido on
Hi.
How is going this? I cannot see this page :  http://madura.bwl.uni-mannheim.de:8000/math but if can support TeX then it would be great to know how the development is going...
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Posted by Nima Mazloumi on
Ricard, sorry...the test page is now under port 8080.

Abelardo, please test. If you are missing something, let me know.

Greetings,
Nima

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Posted by Cathy Sarisky on
Nima, that's pretty cool!

This may interest folks who need equation support as well:  http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/asciimath.html

If you're using Mozilla, you're ready to view the page.  If you're using IE, you need the download mentioned at the top.

I have a hacked forums package that displays equations - it's about a 5 line job, you just have to load the appropriate .js on the pages where you want asciimathml parsed.

Of course, if you come up with a htmlarea-like editor, that would be far superior. :)

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Posted by Ricard Garrido on
Hi Nima.
Im at the math faculty of UV helping out teachers and students with this plataform, and i have heard tons of times in very few days: Can we put TeX in this plataform? There is a way to put mathematical stuff here?...

So it would be great to know if there is some chance to have a package that suport TeX soon, just a test version, here in the UV, so i can tell the teachers : We are working on it :)  Cause it is frustrating to try to convince ppl to use this plataform if they cant do anything (you know, in maths, there is no way to teach with only plain text).

Ricard,
Concord did an integration with webeq (we can mail you the sources of forums), also, you should ask Cathy for her quick hack on asciimath ...
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Posted by Effendy Zainuddin on
hi, the demo instance is down...
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Posted by Effendy Zainuddin on
hi, was refering to this one, http://www.lrnsolutions.com:7500/cvs/viewcvs.cgi/
, yours is fine. thanks
Hi,
i'm doing some researches in interactive maths via web.

A) one of the starting point in tex rendering support.
besides we could consider mathml support, but that is more something that could lie in the browser. (althought a tex plugin exists).

B) one other aspect is the possibility do insert tex/latex in the assessments

C) further on the possibility to have
1) calculated questions
2) integration with a backend CAS

about A) and B) i know for example moodle has a "filter" in place that parses "extra" markup "@@" or "$$" and renders content as gif. That could be the easy way, althought not efficient and... could it be readily implemented so that it should work for ALL content served (forum, ETP, what else?) ?

about C) i've been exploring stacker, based on moodle+maxima but that seems a bit further away...

Anyone likes to share their ideas on these issues ?

ps: nima could you please post about your tentative implementation ? the link you supplied 18 months ago doesn't work anymore...

Greetings
Michele

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Posted by Nima Mazloumi on
I'm afraid but I think I have deleted that server including all files :(