Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: announce: "dbtexmath"

[Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz>]

Allin Cottrell wrote:
> 
> This is a small set of files enabling literal pass-through of TeX math
> to jadetex, in the context of DocBook -- i.e. lets you use TeX math
> rather than MathML in the SGML/XML source file.  Includes a utility to
> auto-generate PNG images from the texmath elements for use in HTML.
> Small addition to the DTD, a few DSSSL bits and pieces, plus some perl
> hackery.
> 
> http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/dbtexmath/

Great!

One year ago, I faced similar problem -- include a lot of math in
DocBook. I tried MathML way, but one equation took 20 lines where TeX
representation was only 50 characters. I put TeX representation directly
into <alt> element in equations. Thus there were no need to modify DTD
and I think that this is allowed usage of alt as I understand TeX as
textual representation of math equation. 

To make your solution more robust, I wouldn't use Perl to extract
filenames for equations, but instead tweak DSSSL sheets to generate some
file with all equations and corresponding image names. This file can be
then used as an input for some script which invokes TeX and image
utilities. When using makefiles, you will also benefit in less
dependencies. 

May be we can informally agree on some common way of including TeX math
into document and add this support to standard DSSSL and XSL stylesheet.
Math is feature which is required by many users, and MathML, uhmm, is a
nice but...

...but when my girlfriend had to write and typeset diploma thesis with a
lot of equations, she wanted to use DocBook. I sad to her - "No,
problem, I will tweak it to handle math". After two days of playing with
MathML DTD, DocBook DTD, customization layer, PassiveTeX and Emacs I had
working setup able to typeset MathML equations and input them in Emacs
with PSGML support. I translated first equation from TeX to MathML and
showed it to my dear. She told me, that she must finished thesis in two
weeks, there weren't time to type all verbose MathML. ;-)

... so some direct TeX equation support may be very useful for many of
us. 

				Jirka

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  Jirka Kosek  	                     
  e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz
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