Using WebTeX with WebEQ

The purpose of WebTeX is to provide a convenient way of hand authoring equations for publication on the Web. However, since WebTeX is not standard, in most situations, it is preferable to convert WebTeX markup in a document into MathML or images. The main exception to this rule arises when scripting the Viewer Control. In this situation, using WebTeX behind the scenes can substantially shorten and simplify the code.

Using WebTeX with the Publisher

The most common way of using WebTeX is to prepare a source document and then process it with WebEQ Publisher. This typically involves multiple iterations of an author-process-view cycle.

The Publisher has several features aimed at making this process as simple and efficient. By default, the Publisher will automatically detect both MathML and WebTeX markup and process it accordingly. This lets you cut and paste MathML from the Editor into a document that uses mostly hand-authored WebTeX. You can also set the Publisher to process only WebTeX or only MathML, which is sometimes useful.

Another useful Publisher feature is the ability to refer to an external WebTeX macro file (see WebEQ Publisher: Translation Options and the next section). This allows you to easily share macros between many documents. Another translation option lets you specify that WebTeX should not be translated into MathML when being displayed in the ViewerControl. Again, this is primarily useful for scripting.

Using WebTeX with the Equation Server

Since the Equation Server is essentially the same program as the Publisher with a command-line interface instead of a graphical user interface, most of the comments from the preceding section apply to the Equation Server too.

The ability to batch process documents with the Equation Server makes it tempting to use WebEQ in conjunction with other software to convert LaTeX files into XHTML + MathML. While this is fairly feasible with very simple documents, this is a very hard problem in general.

Using WebTeX and the ViewerControl

The ViewerControl applet also automatically detects whether input is in WebTeX or MathML format, just as does the Publisher. This goes a long way toward simplifying hand-authoring applet tags for ViewerControl. However, hand authoring applet tags is inherently difficult, since you are required to specify height and width parameters in the applet tags.

By creating a source document and using the Publisher to process it, one can obtain the correct height and width. However, in situations where the ViewerControl applet is being extensively scripted, this may not be so convenient, since markup in script blocks will also be processed.

To help with this situation, another common usage pattern is to enter equation markup into the text area on the Publisher main panel, and send the processed output to a pop up window, where it can be cut and pasted into your document. The same processing options are available when processing single equations or documents, so you can still use macro files, etc.