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January 11, 2004 Version 1.40
m i m e T e X R e a d m e F i l e
Copyright(c) 2002-2004, John Forkosh Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
by: John Forkosh
[email protected] www.forkosh.com
This file is part of mimeTeX, which is free software.
You may redistribute and/or modify it under the terms
of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later,
as published by the Free Software Foundation. See
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Follow the Quick Start instructions immediately below
or the detailed instructions in Section III to install
mimeTeX on your machine, and then point your browser to
http://www.yourdomain.com/mimetex.html
for a complete discussion, including demo/tutorial and
reference. Installation problems? Point your browser
to my page at
http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html
then click its "full mimeTeX manual" link and see
Section II.
I. QUICK START
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To compile and install mimeTeX
o unzip mimetex.zip in any convenient working directory
o to produce an executable that emits anti-aliased gif images
cc -DAA mimetex.c gifsave.c -lm -o mimetex.cgi
-or- for gif images without anti-aliasing
cc -DGIF mimetex.c gifsave.c -lm -o mimetex.cgi
-or- to produce an executable that emits mime xbitmaps
cc -DXBITMAP mimetex.c -lm -o mimetex.cgi
o mv mimetex.cgi to your server's cgi-bin/ directory
o mv mimetex.html to your server's htdocs/ directory
o if the relative path from htdocs to cgi-bin isn't
../cgi-bin then edit mimetex.html and change the
few dozen occurrences as necessary
To quickly learn about mimeTeX
o point your browser to www.yourdomain.com/mimetex.html
Any problems with the above?
o read the more detailed instructions in Section III below,
or see www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html
II. INTRODUCTION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MimeTeX is licensed under the gpl. It parses LaTeX math expressions,
emitting either gif images or mime xbitmaps of them, rather than the
usual TeX dvi's. And mimeTeX is an entirely separate little program
that doesn't use TeX in any way. Therefore, mimeTeX images are easily
inserted directly into html documents using a standard html <img> tag,
<img src="../cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?f(x)=\int_{-\infty}^x~e^{-t^2}dt"
border=0 align=absmiddle>
without intermediate dvi-to-gif conversion, and without storing lots
of little gif image files, one file for each converted expression.
This makes your web site and html documents more easily maintained.
Thus, mimeTeX is primarily intended to help you write native html
documents containing math. In this sense it's a kind of "lightweight"
alternative to MathML, with the advantage that mimeTeX preserves LaTeX
syntax, and works with any browser and server.
III. COMPILATION AND INSTALLATION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've comnpiled and run mimeTeX under Linux and NetBSD using gcc.
The source code is entirely ansi-standard C, and should compile
and execute under all environments without any change whatsoever.
Build instructions below are for Unix. Modify them as necessary
for your particular situation.
Unzip mimetex.zip in any convenient working directory.
You should now have files
mimetex.zip your gnu zipped mimeTeX distribution containing...
README this file (see mimetex.html for demo/tutorial)
LICENSE GPL license, under which you may use mimeTeX
mimetex.c mimeTeX source program and all required functions
mimetex.h header file for mimetex.c (and for gfuntype.c)
gfuntype.c parses output from gftype -i and writes bitmap data
texfonts.h output from several gfuntype runs, needed by mimetex.c
gifsave.c gif library by Sverre H. Huseby <[email protected]>
mimetex.html sample html document, mimeTeX demo and tutorial
Note: all files in mimetex.zip use Unix line termination,
i.e., linefeeds (without carriage returns) signal line endings.
Conversion for Windows, Macs, VMS, etc, can usually be accomplished
with unzip's -a option, i.e., unzip -a mimetex.zip
Now, to produce an executable that emits anti-aliased gif images
(which is how the "official" www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html page
is displayed), compile mimetex with the command
cc -DAA mimetex.c gifsave.c -lm -o mimetex.cgi
Or, to produce an executable that emits gif images
without anti-aliasing, compile mimetex with the command
cc -DGIF mimetex.c gifsave.c -lm -o mimetex.cgi
Alternatively, for an executable that emits mime xbitmaps,
just compile mimetex with the command
cc -DXBITMAP mimetex.c -lm -o mimetex.cgi
Several additional command-line options that you may find
useful are discussed in Section IIc (href="#options")
of mimetex.html .
That's all there is to building mimeTeX. You can now test mimetex.cgi
from the Unix command line by typing, e.g.,
./mimetex.cgi x^2+y^2
which should emit an ascii raster something like the left-hand
illustration. And if you've compiled mimeTeX with the anti-aliasing
-DAA option, then you'll also see the right-hand illustration.
It shows asterisks in the same positions as the left-hand illustration,
and anti-aliased grayscale colormap indexes assigned to neighboring
pixels. And you'll also be shown the actual rgb value for each index.
Ascii dump of bitmap image... Hex dump of colormap indexes...
........**..................**.. .......1**1................1**1.
.......*..*.....*..........*..*. .......*23*.....*..........*23*.
..........*.....*.............*. ..........*.....*.............*.
.***......*.....*....**.*.....*. .***1....2*.....*....**3*....2*.
.**.*....*......*....**.*....*.. .**.*...1*......*....**.*...1*..
..*.....*.*..******...*.*...*.*. ..*....2*.*..******...*.*..2*.*.
**.*...****.....*....*.*...****. **.*...****.....*....*.*2..****.
****............*.....**........ ****............*....1**........
................*......*........ ................*......*........
................*....**......... ................*....**1........
The 5 colormap indexes denote rgb...
.-->255 1-->196 2-->186 3-->177 *-->0
If you get much fancier than x^2+y^2, remember that many characters have
to be escaped from the Unix command line, e.g., x\<y or f\(x\)=x^2, etc.
Of course, you won't need these extra escapes when running mimetex from
a browser.
Once mimetex.cgi is working (and you're done playing with it),
mv it to your server's cgi-bin/ directory, where cgi programs
are expected (and chmod/chown it if necessary). Then mv
mimetex.html to your server's htdocs/ directory. Now point
your browser to www.yourdomain.com/mimetex.html , and it should
be rendered exactly like my page at www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html .
One "gotcha": the two directories are typically of the form
somewhere/www/cgi-bin/ and somewhere/www/htdocs/ , so I set up
mimtex.html to get mimetex.cgi from the relative path ../cgi-bin/ .
If your directories are non-conforming, you may have to edit the
few dozen occurrences of ../cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi in mimetex.html
(globally changing ../cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi should work).
Sometimes a suitable symlink works; if not, you'll have to edit.
Either way, once mimetex.html displays properly, and you've reviewed
the tutorial it contains, you can begin writing html documents using
mimetex.cgi to render your math.
IV. REVISION HISTORY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/11/04 J.Forkosh version 1.40 beta released on www.forkosh.com
LaTeX compatibility and various new features
12/21/03 J.Forkosh version 1.30 released on CTAN, with improved
LaTeX compatibility and anti-aliasing, various new
features, and thoroughly updated documentation.
10/17/03 J.Forkosh version 1.20 released on CTAN, adding picture
environment and various other changes (e.g.,
more delimiters arbitrarily sized) and fixes.
07/29/03 J.Forkosh version 1.10 released on CTAN, completely replacing
mimeTeX's original built-in fonts with thinner and
more pleasing fonts, and adding one larger size.
06/27/03 J.Forkosh version 1.01 released on CTAN, adding lowpass
anti-aliasing for gifs, and http_referer checks,
and fixing a few very obscure bugs.
12/11/02 J.Forkosh version 1.00 released on CTAN, fixing \array bug
and adding various new features.
10/31/02 J.Forkosh version 0.99 released on CTAN
09/18/02 J.Forkosh internal beta test release
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope you find mimeTeX useful. If so, a contribution to your
country's TeX Users Group, or to the GNU project, is suggested,
especially if you're a company that's currently profitable.
If you also like mimeTeX's source, I'm an independent contractor
incorporated in the US as John Forkosh Associates, Inc. A resume
is at www.forkosh.com or email [email protected]
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