Help talk:Displaying a formula

Archives of this page

---

2003|2004|2005|2006|2007|2008

Please add new topics to the bottom of this page

LaTeX symbols

Hello. I'd like to add an alternative layout for the LaTeX symbols. There is a sketch at en:Table of LaTeX symbols ia:Wikipedia:LaTeX symbols. I think that this layout would be very helpful for many people. What is your opinion? --Julian 00:53, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Very nice layout! Helder 01:23, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Converting LaTeX to SVG

I posted this suggestion at the talk page on Wikipedia. If you have any suggestions, please respond there. Ryan Reich 00:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

some vandalism

There is some spam/vandalism with some "kpss"-links on this help page, which sometimes replaced old links. Example: [1]. I currently don't have time to search all original link targets. --95.208.4.121 21:25, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Results of a formula

I am working on Tables for a Wiki that I am wondering if i could get the results to display. this article appears to work for displaying the formula itself. I am building a Template and when an editor/creator fills in the field of the template, it will populate a cell in the table with the value. --Christopher.perkins 18:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

For doing computations see Help:Calculation and mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions. The syntax of the formulas is different from that for displaying a formula .--Patrick (talk) 21:02, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Long arrows

How can that ugly rendering of the long arrows be fixed? -- 79.217.232.40 20:01, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

For reference: TeX to SVG via DVI and EPS

Here’s an alternative way of going from TeX to SVG, of some use in commutative diagrams. It’s not useful for most purposes, hence I’m removing it from the main page (as I was the one who put it there), but is of some reference value, so I include it here:

latex comm.tex
dvips -E -y 2500 -o comm.eps comm.dvi
eps2eps -dNOCACHE comm.eps comm2.eps
pstoedit -f sk comm2.eps comm.sk
inkscape -z -f comm.sk -l comm.svg
# pstoedit -f svg comm2.eps comm.svg # this may also work

“These produce a DVI file, convert it to EPS (rescaling by 2.5x), convert fonts to outlines, and convert to SVG via Sketch. One advantage is that rescaling makes smaller or more complex diagrams more legible, as xy-pic normally sizes for printed matter.”

Nbarth 11:06, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

please, add support for comparision symbols!

those symbols are in unicode and a way much easier to input than use google to find some indirect way to math-syntax help! symbols are "≤" and "≥" Tex was designed for old-time punch cards, that lacked maaaany symbols. Now that symbols are given, please make use of them! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 93.157.184.200 (talk) 15 December 2009

Even if texvc supported those characters in "math" code (which it apparently doesn't), many people would still not be able to generate those characters on their keyboards... - dcljr (talk) 08:53, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

description for \left| and \right|  ???

no help on "absolute value" standard math function. and shouldn't it be in TeX somthing like \abs{value} ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 93.157.184.200 (talk) 15 December 2009

The absolute value function is implemented using the vertical bar (|). It can be used with \left and \right. See "Bars and double bars" under Parenthesizing big expressions, brackets, bars. I've added a parenthetical remark on the help page. - dcljr (talk) 08:46, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Displaying ampersand (&)

When I try \&, I get a can't parse error. How does one get a displayed ampersand?

Thanks. Russ Abbott 04:01, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

<math>\And</math> → $\And$ (See the "Special" section.) - dcljr (talk) 18:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Integer

How do you get, say 2,424÷1,000, to display as a whole number i.e. 2?--Launchballer (talk) 05:07, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

For computations see Help:Calculation. You can use round or trunc.--Patrick (talk) 08:02, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Html????

Newbie reader here, quite confused by the use of "html" in this article. Near as I can tell, what's being called "html" looks like a wiki macro called math. (Certainly when I copy the "html" into a notepad file, save it as html and open it with my browser.... well, it doesn't look at all like a formula should. If there are straight html tags that one can use, even when the math macro isn't available, I'd sure like to know about them.) And... in the meantime, maybe the "html" coding, should be renamed wiki-macro coding. I doubt it works anywhere except on wikimedia sites. 173.206.176.77 22:43, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

The article distinguishes between html and the special TeX code between math tags.--Patrick (talk) 23:17, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

????

Formula in MathJax displays good, but in PNG displays bad. Here is a source of the formula:

\begin{matrix}
\mbox{trilelea} &=& 100 \underbrace{????…????} \\
& & 99 \underbrace{????…????} \\
& & 98 \underbrace{????…????} \\
& & \,\,\qquad\vdots\qquad\,\, \\
& & 4 \underbrace{????…????}\\
& & 3?? \\
\end{matrix}

Trilelea (talk) 19:56, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Translation system

What do you think about enabling the Translate extension on this page? It is a lot easier to update the translations using it... Helder.wiki 13:12, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I think now we need some translation admin to mark the current version of the page for translation. @Nemo bis: do you know if that is right? Or maybe I need to do something else to implement the feature here? Helder.wiki 14:41, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Needs much more work than this, sorry. Main needs:

• add newlines after headers,
• don't put entire lists in one unit (I suggest to make the "Pro" sections use bullets),
• exclude non-translatable bits from translation, especially when they include tables and they are on their own line,
• mark as no longer outdated once it's up to date.

For more, see the manual. --Nemo 14:50, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Mediawiki math markup interpretation upgrade: generate MathML (not PNG) and automatically embed hyperlinks for each symbol

Probably the most unhelpful part of Wikipedia is its implementation of mathematical formulae (the generation of static images from math markup prevents user interaction). For a general user encountering a new equation, they are often shown a) various undefined operators/functions, and b) various undefined variables/constants. I suggest the following updates to Mediawiki/Wikipedia to extend its high level of usability to its interpretation of math markup;

a) i. Latex format should be retained for user equation editing, however the equation renderer must be updated substantially. The Latex code should be converted by the Mediawiki server to MathML before being sent to the client's browser. Users without native MathML support should be encouraged to update to a W3C standards compliant browser asap (e.g. Firefox). ii. Wikipedia should automatically generate MathML hyperlinks for every operator/operation/function (e.g. <msqrt href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root">) and variable/constant (e.g. <mi href="en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_vector">x</mi>) in the formula.

b) Consider creating a new Wikipedia Template specific to ambiguous mathematical formulae (with one or more undefined variable/constant) called "Template:Definition needed".

Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 00:40, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Hello comminity,

I really like the simple but very clear version of Julian Mendez, the link is in the first or second row of this discussion. Is anybody out there, who has the possibility to complete or better said to fulfill his version, an maybe finally give a better findable heading to it, so its easier to find it on google. Something like "Tex help" or "overview Tex" or something like that. I think it is a really helpful tool for all the beginners and the pros, also. Thanks!

Math symbol code

Hi. I wonder how come the Greek alphabet letters are not independently coded like the regular coding of Anglo-Latino alphabet? Why write \alpha and not α? These letters are used so much.

And the same with symbols like ∅ instead of {\empty,\emptyset,\varnothing}, ℕ instead of \N and so on.

In any way there is no consistency in many codings, like \N is $\mathbb {N}$ but \A isn't $\mathbb {A}$ but rather undefined.

Can someone change all this? יהודה שמחה ולדמן (talk) 15:00, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Sections screwed up

Sorry if I got something wrong, I am just a wiki noob who tries to understand some of this magic here. If I edit a single section, what I see is not what I expected: Tried to edit Formatting issues, where I end up to edit instead is this:

===Integrals=== <!--T:109-->
 <math>\int_a^x \!\!\!\int_a^s f(y)\,dy\,ds = \int_a^x f(y)(x-y)\,dy</math>
 
 <math>\int_a^x \!\!\!\int_a^s f(y)\,dy\,ds
 = \int_a^x f(y)(x-y)\,dy</math>

If you try to edit a section way down this article, e. g. Integrals, you end up with an error message:
"You tried to edit a section that does not exist. It may have been moved or deleted while you were viewing the page."
Maybe an issue with the translation plugin? -15:20, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Displaying formulas in arabic and other RTL languages

I seem unable to figure out how to display formulas in RTL properly, the \text{} is indeed allowing to use non latin letters, but the RTL logic is otherwise missing, or symbols needed for that are missing (e.g. a right to left sigma). this is getting more problematic with articles being translated to arabic and showing equations and formulas for readers in a form and language they are not familiar with leaving behind most of the readers up to high school in arabic speaking countries.--Uwe a (talk) 18:57, 2 July 2017 (UTC)