# Calculemus!

Let us calculate.

## W00t! LaTeX on Blogger

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Some of the bloggers I read have already migrated to WordPress to get advantage of the neat feature of using commands to display mathy-logicky stuff in their posts (see here and here), and I know that Peter Smith and Shawn Standefer are probably giving it a thought right about now. While I consider migrating myself, there are some advantages of using Blogger (such as good interaction with Google – you don’t want to know how many clicks I get on this silly post). So I tried to find out whether there’s something to be done about it.

Update, 12/4: folded for faster loading. Better see this summary anyway.
Click to unfold.

Method 1: Use a script to generate an image that can be embedded in your blog post. You can use MimeTex, or the version modified by Shital Shah. You can install the script on your computer, or use an external server (Shital’s can be used freely). In order to use the latter, just write in the HTML source [img src=”http://shitalshah.com/?\\$\LaTeX%20code%20 here\\$”] (replace brackets with angles; Blogger seems to mess up the code. Note that „%20” is HTML code for space.) [Update: You’d rather make sure that you’re using a light background, and that
the borders are the same color]. For instance, write this

[img src=”http://shitalshah.com/?\$\large%20*14\cdot%2001\quad[(\iota%20x)\phi%20x].\psi(\iota%20x)\phi%20x.=:(\exists%20b):\phi%20x.\equiv%20x.x=b:\psi%20b\quad\textrm{Df}\\$”]

to get

Is this neat, or is this neat? Well, I’m cheating syntax a bit, and that’s not an inverted iota, but, if you can recognize that as the famous Principia Mathematica definition of the definite description operator, it should be neat enough. The main drawback is that it cannot be used in comments (since images are not allowed there).

Method 2 involves working with Firefox, Greasemonkey, and a script that can be downloaded from here. Since I’m at school now and I can’t install things on this computer (and I’m also very curious to see how this post will look like when it’s done), you’ll have to check this for the details. All I can say is that it involves the same principle (embedding an image created by the script), and from what I’ve seen (here, here, or here)it doesn’t look much better. I’ll give it a try and tell you about it soon.

Reclame

Written by Stefan Ionescu

Martie 31, 2008 la 6:10 pm

Publicat în EN, Geekery