[Pmwiki-users] Typesetting math -- experience using PmWiki

[Joachim Durchholz]

chr at home.se wrote:
> 
> This is probably a general problem with HTML, but when doing technical 
> stuff you really need something. (Would be needed when writing emails as 
> well for that matter).
> 
> Patrick told me:
> 
>>MimeTex continues to get updated; indeed, John Forkosh has been updating
>>his package so that it incorporates the caching directly and
>>(supposedly) integrates easier with PmWiki.

MediaWiki uses TeX. I don't know specifics, but I'd assume that they use 
TeX to generate formulae as bitmaps and include these into the HTML.

Personally, I highly dislike TeX due to its horrific syntax. The TeX 
typesetting algorithm has been recast in OCaml (I think, I'll have to 
look it up), so it would be easy to retrofit a better syntax.

The downside of all this is that math typesetting is heavy on syntax, 
which is diametrally opposite to pmWiki's simplicity goal. I'm not sure 
how to handle that (maybe recast syntax extensions in plug-ins, and have 
a syntax that tells the page editor "here comes complicated plug-in 
stuff"...)

Just my 2c,
Jo