== About texvc ==
-texvc takes LaTeX-compatible equations and produces formatted output in
-HTML, MathML, and (via LaTeX/dvips/ImageMagick) rasterized PNG images.
-Input data is parsed and scrutinized for safety, and the output includes
-an estimate of whether the code is simple enough that HTML rendering will
-look acceptable.
+texvc takes LaTeX-compatible equations and produces formatted output in HTML,
+MathML, and (via LaTeX/dvipng) rasterized PNG images.
+Input data is parsed and scrutinized for safety, and the output includes an
+estimate of whether the code is simple enough that HTML rendering will look
+acceptable.
-The program was written by Tomasz Wegrzanowski for use with MediaWiki;
-it's included as part of the MediaWiki package (http://wikipedia.sf.net)
-and is under the GPL license.
+The program was written by Tomasz Wegrzanowski for use with MediaWiki; it's
+included as part of the MediaWiki package (http://www.mediawiki.org) and is
+under the GPL license.
-Please report bugs at: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ (under "MediaWiki")
+Please report bugs at: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
+with "MediaWiki extensions" as product and "texvc" as component.
== Setup ==
=== Requirements ===
-OCaml 3.06 or later is required to compile texvc; this can be acquired
-from http://caml.inria.fr/ if your system doesn't have it available.
+OCaml 3.06 or later is required to compile texvc; this can be acquired from
+http://caml.inria.fr/ if your system doesn't have it available.
The makefile requires GNU make.
-Rasterization is done via LaTeX, dvips, and ImageMagick. These need
-to be installed and in the PATH: latex, dvips, convert
+Rasterization is done via LaTeX, dvipng. These need to be installed and in
+the PATH: latex, dvipng
-To work properly with rendering non-ASCII Unicode characters, a
-supplemental TeX package is needed (cjk-latex in Debian)
+AMS* packages for LaTeX also need to be installed. Without AMS* some equations
+will render correctly while others won't render. Most distributions of TeX
+already contain AMS*. In Debian/Ubuntu you need to install tetex-extra.
+
+To work properly with rendering non-ASCII Unicode characters, a supplemental TeX
+package is needed (cjk-latex in Debian)
=== Installation ===
Run 'make' (or 'gmake' if GNU make is not your default make). This should
produce the texvc executable.
-If you're using MediaWiki's install.php and have enabled $wgUseTeX in your
-LocalSettings.php, the installer will try to copy texvc into place, in the
-'math' subdirectory under where wiki.phtml is installed.
-
+Then you'll need to set $wgUseTeX to true in your LocalSettings.php. By default,
+MediaWiki will search in this directory for texvc, if you moved it elsewhere,
+you'll have to modify $wgTexvc and set it to the path of the texvc executable.
== Usage ==
=== Command-line parameters ===
- texvc <temp directory> <output directory> <TeX code> <encoding>
+ texvc <temp directory> <output directory> <TeX code> <encoding> <color>
Be sure to properly quote the TeX code!
Example:
- texvc /home/wiki/tmp /home/wiki/math "y=x+2" iso-8859-1
+ texvc /home/wiki/tmp /home/wiki/math "y=x+2" iso-8859-1 "rgb 1.0 1.0 1.0"
=== Output format ===
== Troubleshooting ==
-Unforunately, many error conditions with rasterization are not well reported.
+Unfortunately, many error conditions with rasterization are not well reported.
texvc will return as though everything is successful, and the only obvious
sign of problems for the user is a big X on a wiki page where an equation
should be.
the user account the web server runs under; if you don't control the server,
you may have to make them world-writable.
+If some equations render correctly while others don't, you probably don't have
+AMS* packages for LaTeX installed. Most distributions of TeX come with AMS*.
+In Debian/Ubuntu AMS* is in tetex-extra package.
+To check if that is the problem you can try those two equations:
+ x + y
+ x \implies y
+The first uses only standard LaTeX, while the second uses symbol \implies from AMS*.
+If the first renders, but the second doesn't, you need to install AMS*.
+
== Hacking ==
Before you start hacking on the math package its good to know the workflow,
2. texvc does its magic, which is basically to check for invalid latex code.
3. texvc takes the user input if valid and creates a latex file containing it, see
get_preface in texutil.ml
-4. latex(1) gets called to create a .dvi file, the a .ps file is created from the
- .dvi file using dvips(1), and finally convert(1) creates a .png file from
- the .ps file. See render.ml for this process (commenting out the removal of
+4. dvipng(1) gets called to create a .png file
+ See render.ml for this process (commenting out the removal of
the temporary file is useful for debugging).