Talk:Add Math Support

MathML

Just one more idea: take a look at MathML. In contrast to LateX/TeX, MathML is an XML standard which would make it more compatible to the Scribus file format.

There are some C++ - libs which can be a good starting point:

• http://helm.cs.unibo.it/mml-widget/
• http://www.e-teaching.org/glossar/mathml

As stated in one of the feature request linked from the proposal, MathML is good for software, but it is hard to write for humans. OTOH the output of your first link looks quite good and it would remove the dependency on external software. So here's a list of pros and cons I can think of:

Pros

• No external dependency
• Better integration with XML

Cons

• Hard to edit by humans
• Many people are familiar with latex
• With LyX a pretty good editor for latex exists
• mml-widget has font problems *)
• Porting form GTK might be required

*) (From the mml-widget webpage) Warning: you may notice some differences between the rendering of GtkMathView and the screenshots above. This is primarily due to the actual fonts installed on your system. Note also that some fonts are buggy, that is they have wrong/strange metrics for some symbols. In particular, the symbol font (75dpi) usually shipped with Unix/Linux has a buggy vertical bar for the integral sign, so that large integrals have the middle part misaligned.

Additional Links

• http://pear.math.pitt.edu/mathzilla/itex2mml.html
• http://www.w3.org/Math/Software/mathml_software_cat_editors.html
• A converter from MathML to SVG implemented in Python

Some More Thoughts

One more pro of MathML:

1.) It's no problem to convert them into SVG. Scribus can handle SVG already properly, so that the graphik rendering wouldn't be a big task.

2.) I agree with you that MathML isn't nice to handle manualy. But there are some editors which are using a simple syntax for equations, for example OpenOffice. Exporting them into MathML works fine.

Perhaps it could work this way:

a) Add an special equation-editor to Scribus. It uses a simple, manualy manageable syntax.

b) Than, export it into MathML. Store the MathML-Code in the Scribus file.

c) If it comes to rendering, convert the MathML to SVG and let Scribus do the rest.

(Take a look at GtkMathViewer (http://helm.cs.unibo.it/mml-widget/), it seems so that the AbiWord-people used it for adding mathematical functionality to AbiWord)

Btw., discussions within a Wiki are a terrible thing .... ;-(

Other thoughts

Embedding other external tools

In the original discussion on adding Latex frames in the bugtracker (http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=128), the idea came up of embedding output from other programs in frames as well, like a plotting tool. It would be great if you design the scheme for storing Latex source, automatically calling Latex and embedding the output to be general enough that other things besides Latex could be supported in scribus frames in the future.

I'd love to be able to type in an equation and have not only the equation itself, but also its graph, automatically update when I edit the source. :) --Mkoren

On other TeX flavors and MathML

Someone posted a comment on the main scribus summer of code ideas page, under the Latex frames support section, that's rather interesting. Evidently there are some other TeX distributions besides Latex which have improved font support, and/or can actually render MathML themselves, and in one case can still render Latex as well.

Maybe looking into these could reduce the work you have to do to integrate TeX with Scribus styling, and even give the people that prefer MathML a route to go as well without any extra effort on your part. --Mkoren