Hi, My name is Lars Lindqvist and I wonder if there are any packages which makes it possible to include diagrams in documents on the WWW in a conveniant manner? What I have in mind are packages similar to the existing packages for the creation of diagrams in e.g. LaTex. Very simple diagrams can probably be specified using the table construct in MathML but problems occur quite rapidly as the diagrams become more complicated. MathML is simply not intended for specification of such diagrams. See e.g. the last paragraph in section 7.1.5.2 of the MathML specification http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-MathML2-19991222: " Finally, apart from the introduction of new glyphs, many of the situations where one might be inclined to use an image amount to some sort of labeled diagram. For example, knot diagrams, Venn diagrams, Dynkin diagrams, Feynman diagrams and complicated commutative diagrams all fall into this category. As such, their content would be better encoded via some combination of structured graphics and MathML markup. Because of the generality of the `labeled diagram' construction, the definition of a markup language to encode such constructions extends beyond the scope of the W3C Math activity. (See http://www.w3.org/Graphics for further W3C activity in this area.) " Following this suggestion I have made some initial attemts to construct an XML markup language for diagrams. I have also written a XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) schema that transforms diagrams specified in this language to a VML (Vector Markup Language) specification which can be rendered by e.g. Internet Explorer 5. There is a lot of work involved in a project like this so I am really interested to hear about other attempts and experiences before I continue. /Lars Lindqvist ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
I would suggest doing it in tex and then converting it to pdf, which is quickly coming to be a standard for the web. There are at least two ways of doing tex --> pdf that cost no money. (You can also get Adobe distiller, but that costs actual money.) There is something called pdflatex, that I have not used but it comes free with the tex distribution from CTAN (it is essentially undocumented, so if you figure it out, I would like to know about how it works. A second, not entirely satisfactory is to use the ability of gsview to output pdf files. You choose print to disk and then you get a pdf file that can be read with the Adobe reader. It is common practice to put a link to the free download of the Adobe reader when you post a pdf file, but most users of the web probably have it by now. Michael Barr
From: Michael Barr <barr@barrs.org>
I would suggest doing it in tex and then converting it to pdf, which is quickly coming to be a standard for the web. There are at least two ways of doing tex --> pdf that cost no money. There is something called pdflatex.
Still beta I believe, but works well.
A second, not entirely satisfactory is to use the ability of gsview to output pdf files. You choose print to disk and then you get a pdf file that can be read with the Adobe reader.
Best results are obtained by using type 1 fonts and the most recent version of ghostscript, currently 5.97, or maybe 6. Another possibility, which I've found gives the best results, is to use a free program called dvipdfm: http://odo.kettering.edu/dvipdfm/ Bob T.
Paul and Michael, There is perhaps no realistic alternative to LaTeX for writing mathematics today, but MathML is a language for the future and I like the visions and the goals associated with this language. I will not try to argue for MathML here because this is done in the specification (actually a draft) at http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-MathML2-19991222. As discussed in Section 1.3.1 (Layered Design of Mathematical Web Services) MathML provides the lower level of a two layer architecture where LaTeX would be a language (tool) at the higher level (generating MathML code). There already exists several different tools for converting LaTeX to MathML so a straightforward solution would be to construct a converter also for some popular diagram specification language (package). Since MathML does not support the specification of complicated labelled diagrams the output would be a mixture of MathML and e.g. VML (or SVG) which are markup languages for vector graphics. This would also be in accordance with Section 7.1.5.2 of the MathML specification. So I suppose I have to reformulate my question from my first letter and ask whether there are any such tools or converters? I do not know much about the PDF format. When I publish a document written in LaTeX on the web I usually generate a postscript version and a PDF version (generated using Adobe distiller). Thanks for your replies. Lars L ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
MikTeX, a free TeX implementation for PC's (and possibly other platforms, I'm not certain) comes with a dvi-to-pdf converter, called dvipdfm. Use it just like dvips, and you get pdf format. Bob Harper
participants (4)
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Lars Lindqvist -
Michael Barr -
Robert Harper -
Robert Tennent