Displaying LaTeX formulae on web pages

For a while now, I have been pondering about the best way to display to $\LaTeX$ formulae in web pages.

There are many web sites which will take your $\LaTeX$ equation and turn it into a PNG image. There are also a bunch of programs that will allow you to create those equation images offline.

However, I did not find those solutions to be satisfactory (based on purely subjective taste criteria which I am not willing to try to enumerate ;-)

Today, I found out that Google’s chart API also allows you to render $\LaTeX$ equations.

The logo I used on this page was generated using the URL http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=tx&chl=%5cLaTeX&chs=18&chf=bg,s,dadada. The style on the IMG element is simply:

.post img.inline {
  border:0;
  padding:0;
  margin:0;
  vertical-align:text-bottom;
}

And, here is a utility maximization problem:

$\begin{eqnarray*} \max && U(x,y) \\ \mathrm{s.t.} && p_x x + p_y y \leq I \\ && x \geq 0, y \geq 0 \end{eqnarray*}$

i like it.

Update my module template::plugin::googlelatex enables you to type equations in template toolkit documents and converts them to appropriate url’s for Google’s service. See it used on Why are macro guys so grumpy?.

Displaying LaTeX formulae on web pages

A. Sinan Unur

July 25, 2010