Rendering Mathematical Notation in Web Pages.

Netscape and Internet Explorer allow web authors to use superscripts and subscripts and also have the few mathematical symbols and fractions that are part of the ASCII code. Indeed the only fractions that standard HTML handles are ¼, ½, and ¾. The fractions you see in stock quotes on the web, e.g., 57 ¹/₈ are written with subscripts and superscripts, the "1" as a superscript of the "7" and the "8" a subscript of the "/". We have to use other methods to write more complex structures on the web.

If the web author knows a priori what the expression will be, there are several solutions. An article by Dr. Freese of the University of Hawaii describes various options that the web author can use. I genrally use a java applet called WebEQ from Center for the Computation and Visualization of Geometric Structures, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center at the University of Minnesota. To give the reader an idea of what can be done with WebEQ here is

An image of a page prepared using T_ex
The same page using WebEQ
I used the WebT_ex program to do most of the translation and tweaked it a bit. (I deliberately chosea passage that is difficult to render.) There is a newer version of the WebEQ applet that does even better.

The situation is more complicated if we have dynamic materials so that we do not know a priori what the expression will be. The problem of rendering it becomes more difficult. So for instance in the applets on fractions we have to change the fraction real time. This is achieved by using java "layout managers" to build the complex structures.

e-mail: C. Mawata