LaTeX implementation

by admin

I went through most of the plugins which were tagged LaTeX on wordpress.com to make sure that I was using the most fully-featured implementation.

  1. LaTeX for WordPress: The most popular (based on the number of downloads) plugin, and returns MathJax 1 but it suffers from the problem of being the first mover. It has limited extensibility and does not allow arbitrary LaTeX packages to be loaded, a single LaTeX tag, no ability to declare macros (this was the deal-breaker for me), and no support for AMS-math environments like align.
  2. WP LaTeX: I think this is the native LaTeX implementation in wordpress, and it looks pretty basic -- I have not tried it. It works by generating PNG images from the LaTeX markup.
  3. Enable LaTeX : This is another light and user friendly plugin built on top of the WP LaTeX plugin, allowing basic color and theme switches.
  4. Easy WP LaTeX : This is a recent plugin and developed from the LaTeX for WordPress by zhiqian. It aims to be user friendly and fixes some basic flaws in the original implementation.
  5. WP QuickLaTeX: If the features are anything to go by, this represents quite a bit of work on part of the developers. Each and everyone of the highlighted features -- "Inline formulas, displayed equations auto-numbering, labeling and referencing, AMS-LaTeX, TikZ, custom LaTeX preamble." is something I consider a useful improvement over other plugins. A truly impressive example of this implementation in action here.

Additional features to think about. I have postponed making some design choices for later, the most important of which is the ability to produce fully functioning PDF versions of the blog posts.

  1. LaTeX to WordPress: This package claims to allow writing blog posts completely in LaTeX and then transferring them to WP after minimal changes. This sounds very attractive, but I am a little wary of this claim. If this works reasonably, this would definitely be my preferred workflow. Write posts completely in LaTeX and use this package to post to WP.
  2. LaTeX everything: The reverse of the above process is also possible. Writing the blog post and then converting everything to a PDF.

And just so as you know that the LaTeX on this blog is up and running,
\text{Hello }\LaTeX \text{ world!}

  1. What is the precise nature of Mathjax? It is a Javascript translator that takes input (from LaTeX markup in this case) and turns it into either one of HTML-with-CSS markup; SVG; or native MathML markup. It does require client-side JavaScript though (a problem in the 21st century?). ↩