sunlight

m-math

Introduction

Around December 1999, I started to write and maintain a site (Fourier analysis tutorials) that contained a lot of mathematical equations. At first, I decided to typeset all these in an equation editor (Mathcad, Word) in cases where I could not represent them in clear text.

This provided several problems: it was troublesome to carry out in the first place, consumed a lot of space, slowed download times and difficult to update. I also had frequent problems with transparency.

I began to search for a more Web-friendly solution. I came across the MINSE polymediator (at http://www.lfw.org/math/) which seemed a good solution to the development problems, but the presentation was unsatisfactory and the result very slow to load. I also investigated other avenues, including WebEQ (http://www.webeq.com/), but all were too slow or clumsy for my needs.

What I was after was a simple solution: a browser plug-in that would take a clear text equation and present it. MathML (http://www.w3.org/Math/) is ideal for this, but unfortunately the only browser to support it is Amaya, from the W3C themselves, making it somewhat useless for the present. I decided to write my own plug-in, that would simply take an equation and render it.

New! m-math 1.1 is now available. This improves equation rendering, adds printing support, and renders much more quickly.

Features

m-math offers the following features:

  • Fast - instantaneous rendering of even complex equations
  • Well-presented - uses native text output, including font smoothing
  • Easy-to-use - includes design-time control for Visual Interdev, FrontPage and other ActiveX-compatible HTML editors. This means that equations can be viewed in final form in the page editor.

m-math is optimised for Web page delivery. If you want to include well-presented mathematics in your documents, use Embedded TEX.

Examples

Here are some examples of m-math output to test your installation. Note that these are not necessarily useful formulae!

m-math is not installed. Please visit http://sunlightd.virtualave.net/m-math/ to download the latest version.

m-math is not installed. Please visit http://sunlightd.virtualave.net/m-math/ to download the latest version.

m-math is not installed. Please visit http://sunlightd.virtualave.net/m-math/ to download the latest version.

You can also view a reference guide to the use of m-math, and also a symbol list.

There is also a proof that 0.9 recurring = 1...

Download

m-math is a Windows ActiveX control, usable with Internet Explorer only. Netscape is a possibility for future development, but is not currently supported. 

m-math installation uses the new Microsoft Windows Installer technology, to be fully Windows 2000-compliant. You must have the Windows Installer installed (included in Windows 2000 and Office 2000), downloadable from Microsoft's Web site.

If you have an older version of m-math installed, you must remove it before you can install another version.

Install file (268k)

If you get Windows Installer errors with this, try downloading the Zip file.

Please feel free to contact me if you encounter any problems.

 

Copyright © David McCabe, 1998 - 2001. All rights reserved.

You will need to download and install the m-math control to display any equations on this Web site. Without this control, you will not see most of the equations. Please do not e-mail me asking why the equations do not display!

[an error occurred while processing this directive]