January 1, 2009
The Blog post Online LaTeX is a great overview online of the services available for typesetting LaTeX. There are a lot of sites providing inline equation compilation which one is the best in terms of quality and ease of use. I wanted to give a visual comparison of all of the service which provide inline equation generation require no software installation.
In the end I think I lean toward the Codecogs png or gif version for quality and transparent background. In terms of use they are all pretty much the same. Codecogs is the only site providing swf output which could be nice for a really large equation. Check it out and decide for yourself.
NOTE: MathTran and sitmo (the last two) actually render the equation incorrectly though it is exactly the same in every case.
Codecogs (gif)
<img src="http://www.codecogs.com/gif.latex?z_t = \displaystyle\sum^p_{j=1}\phi_jz_{t-j}+\sigma_\epsilon\xi_t" />
Codecogs (png)
<img src="http://www.codecogs.com/png.latex?z_t = \displaystyle\sum^p_{j=1}\phi_jz_{t-j}+\sigma_\epsilon\xi_t.gif" />
Codecogs (swf)
<embed width="200" height="50" src="http://www.codecogs.com/swf.latex.swf?z_t = \displaystyle\sum^p_{j=1}\phi_jz_{t-j}+\sigma_\epsilon\xi_t" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" align="top" scale="showall" wmode="window" devicefont="false" bgcolor="#ffffff" menu="true" allowFullScreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ></embed>
mathTeX
<img src="http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mathtex.cgi?z_t = \displaystyle\sum^p_{j=1}\phi_jz_{t-j}+\sigma_\epsilon\xi_t"/>
mimeTeX
<img src="http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mimetex.cgi?z_t = \displaystyle\sum^p_{j=1}\phi_jz_{t-j}+\sigma_\epsilon\xi_t" />
sitmo equation editor:
<img src="http://www.sitmo.com/gg/latex/latex2png.2.php?z=100&eq=z_t = \displaystyle\sum^p_{j=1}\phi_jz_{t-j}+\sigma_\epsilon\xi_t"/>
MathTran
<img src="http://mathtran.open.ac.uk/cgi-bin/mathtran?D=1;tex=z_t = \displaystyle\sum^p_{j=1}\phi_jz_{t-j}+\sigma_\epsilon\xi_t"/>
Filed under:
Graphics, LaTeX by cameron
[...] and which are integrated simply through image hotlinks. See on the Cameron.bracken.bz blog this posting here for example. These solutions naturally do not need no plugin to run on your blog and are based on [...]
Thanks of the link to my post!
Any idea how can I change font of CodeCogs output to Courier or Courier New. The examples link gives keywords for only a limited number of fonts and it doesn’t include Courier/Courier New.
\mbox{\fontfamily{pcr}\selectfont This is fixed width courier}
should work. If you want courier new it is just a matter of finding out what the font family name is
Thanks cameron. That helped in changing the font of the text but the font of the math symbols and equations remains the same.