MINSE: [index]
design -
syntax -
usage -
notations -
styles -
contexts -
[why?] -
demo
LaTEX -
WebEQ
- Programs like LaTeX2HTML and Hyperlatex
require users to prepare documents in LaTEX. TEX is
a large, very powerful, and complicated program, and TEX
documents are difficult to standardize; often documents that compile
in one place won't compile in another. This causes problems in an
environment like the World-Wide Web, and makes the job of programs
like LaTeX2HTML very difficult.
- LaTeX2HTML is itself quite complicated, and
converting from TEX in general requires the installation
of many tools. It is usually only feasible on
a Unix workstation.
The conversion process takes your document through many steps to
produce the resulting images:
- First your document has to be compiled by TEX.
- Then
dvi
output from TEX gets converted into a
PostScript file with dvips
.
- Then GhostScript, a PostScript interpreter, has
to render the result to a
PPM
(portable pixmap) image.
- Then the image has to be cropped to the right size.
- Finally the image has to be converted from a
PPM
to a GIF
using ppmtogif
and an appropriate link inserted in the main document.
You need to
install all of these programs to make it work.
If a problem occurs anywhere during this convoluted procedure,
you may have to spend some time figuring out what went wrong -- and this
process has to take place for each and every image in your entire document.
- This means the process takes a long time, and editing the document
is difficult. Once an equation has been rendered as an image,
the image
is fixed and difficult to change; you have to edit the original document
and run the conversion again (on the entire document!)
to see the results.
- Moreover, the output produced by LaTeX2HTML is
full of arbitrary numbers and generated link references like
node19.html#SECTION000410000000000000000
and fragment
identifiers like tex2html631
, since it's produced by a
computer that can't read and understand your text. You may end up
generating hundreds of images from the equations in your document, all
with incomprehensible filenames like img66.gif
or
_5696_tabular1030.gif
.
When you use MINSE, things are quite different.
- Your document gets processed in one pass. The polymediator
parses the expressions in your document and inserts the link
references. It's simple, and if something is wrong with your
expression you'll be shown right away what it is.
- You don't have to wait for conversion very long. You can edit
the document in place and preview it. It's quick, and you don't have
to install anything on your machine; all you need is a text editor,
not a Unix workstation.
- The URLs that get produced are very long (because they contain all of
the information that the renderer needs to make the image), but you
will never have to see or work with the file or the filename.
- For a graphical rendering, the images are generated each time the
document is viewed; you don't have to save dozens of tiny files along
with your document. For a text rendering, the document is processed
and cached. You get multiple renderings of your document for no
extra work on your part.
- More people can read documents containing MINSE structured
expressions, because it can be rendered to different media. Currently,
expressions are viewable both as graphics and as text! Output from
LaTeX2HTML will never be viewable on a text terminal.
copyright © by Ping (e-mail) updated Mon 24 Jun 1996 at 05:41 JST
since Mon 17 Jun 1996