LaTeX based chat | Hacker News Reader

LaTeX based chat

mathim.com

77 pointschromophore22 comments

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin-latex/

Adium used to have a plugin for this too, which I used to use, but I haven't bothered to see if there's a current version.

http://adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=5577

Last update was a little under a year ago.

You can also use http://thewe.net/tex/ to type out equations on gmail (as well as in the gmail chat).

Neat. Some time ago I made a little web site that can turn LaTeX into a PNG file for those times when you need a quick equation (or inequality): http://equationater.com/

How about if we meet/test in room "HN"? http://www.mathim.com/HN

Note that on http://www.mathim.com/translate/ when you type anything with a slash in it (eg: "x/2") it tries to go to http://www.mathim.com/translate/x/2 and fails, presumably because it's trying to interpret the slash as a directory separator.

Edit: cool, looks like you fixed the http://www.mathim.com/translate/x/2 as I spoke. Though the image at http://render.mathim.com/x/2 is still broken.

I did this a few years back for an independent study in college. Once the semester was over I never touched it again though. Hopefully they'll do a better job.

http://carnap.cs-i.brandeis.edu/~dlaz/dev/groupmath/chat.xml, for anyone who's interested.

The interface for Mathematica, which typically consists of bracketing special characters with escape characters, is a lot less cumbersome than LaTeX for writing something quickly. For example, the integral of the square root of x is entered

esc int esc ctrl-2 x left arrow esc dd esc x. Shift-enter evaluates the thing to 2/3 x^3/2.

Nice. Would be nice if it use MathML (or something like that) instead of images.

The point of using LaTeX to render an image is that it preserves the beautiful and precise layout that only the (La)TeX engine can give.

Maybe. I have used latex extensively (and is now currently busy typing my dissertation in Latex). I personally think that Latex is a bit overrated.

There can be much better programs and Latex's applicability is fairly limited. It takes hours to get something to look right.

Still? Christ it tooks hours when I typed my dissertation-- and that was pushing 20 years ago.

Wow, I'm glad I don't have to use LaTex.

Yeah it's OK for typesetting books but very verbose for chatting. Though if you need to chat about integrals and the like I guess you are stuck with it.

We're just talking about LaTeX's math mode here. Are there any more concise and easier ways to type math on a normal keyboard and have it display in a pretty way?

Maple will take input like

  y=int(x^2,x=0..100)

and turn it into pretty print. That seems more natural than LaTeX. LaTeX is for getting exactly what you want on paper, at the expense of ease of typing.

Mathematica will do

    In[1]:= Unevaluated[y = Integrate[x^2, {x, 0, 100}]] // TeXForm
    Out[1]= y=\int_0^{100} x^2 \, dx

which in that case is rather pointless but I suppose it could be helpful in the case of something more complicated.

Maybe Maple can do that too; I don't know since I've only ever used Maple for one 20-minute session and don't have a copy handy.

Yes, it can, and the input syntax is much nicer, even:

  > latex('y = int(x^2, x=0..100)')
  
  y=\int _{0}^{100}\!{x}^{2}{dx}

Is that harder than $\int_{0}^{100} x^2 dx$? Your version is only 4 chars less, and mine looks more like the actual math...

LaTeX has the added advantage that most mathematicians have it in muscle memory. (I have latex in emacs muscle memory, so I have a hard time using mathim.)

i find the non-latex version better because it has fewer $ and \ and {}

I've been playing with Open Office Math lately, and using it to convert to MathML. It may be worth a look (behaves like the formula insert in OO Writer).

Needs more tornado. Or, err, twisted.web.

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