Re: Latex plugin

[James K.Lowden <jklowden speakeasy org>]

On Sat, 31 Aug 2002 18:16:30 +0100 (IST), Alan Horkan <horkana@tcd.ie>
wrote:

> On Sat, 31 Aug 2002, Ben V wrote:
> >
> > But there is something i am a bit struglling with, is to
> > write equation or at least greek symbols.
> > Would it be possible, to have a plugin, which will allows to
> > write some text and seen it interpreted in Latex?

> As previously suggested the symbol font sounds like the best way to go
> about this.  i think gcharmap (or gcharacter or something similar, why
> the bastards could not just call it charmap <sigh>) would help you do
> this.
> 
> Maybe in future Dia could have some way to invoke the Character Map or
> some sort of insert Symbol Dialog, I dunno, so many things to do, so
> little time.

I'm sure there are many details I don't understand, but two thoughts:

1.  I doubt the symbol font is of much use to Ben V.  I don't think the
quadratic formula or much of Chapter 1 from a caluculus text could be
expressed with a symbol font.  

2.  It seems to me that MathML might be a better fit with Dia than Latex. 


MathML is XML and could be embedded in Dia diagrams much the way SVG is. 
DSSSL stylesheets (http://www.nag.co.uk/projects/OpenMath/mml-files/)
render it to TeX and others.  There is also an XSLT
(http://www.raleigh.ru/MathML/mmltex/index.php?lang=en).  

GtkMathView (http://www.cs.unibo.it/helm/mml-widget/) is a MathML viewing
widget, and might be a place to start.  

HTH.

--jkl