Question

I’m looking for a LateX library to render formulas.

The project is an offline database of math\physic formulas for a Smartphone application. I need the application to be not too heavy, and that users can enter their own formulas. So i want the program to render written formulas more than to display PNG files that are heavier.

The second tricky part is that the application will be both on Android (my part) and IPhone (another developper will do it).

The database will be the same in the two cases (SQLite), so we need to render the same written formulas, and preferably it will be Latex. But it can be different libraries.

Do you have any idea ?

Answer 1

Have a look at MathJax. This Javascript library renders TeX commands into math formulas. This is becoming more and more popular, many science and mathematical journal websites are adopting it to render equations online.

Usually MathJax is applied to the entire webpage to render all the equations at once; it’s perfectly fine for computers, but I found it’s a bit slow on iPhone / iPad. I guess it’s similar on Android.

You should be able to use just the rendering part without much performance penalty, though.

Anyway, don’t re-invent the wheel; instead, please contribute to MathJax!