The LaTeX Processor Forum Plugin

By Bobby on Fri, 9 Jan 2009 05:05:41 +0000

: latex, forum, plugin, compile,

The LaTeX Processor forum plugin adds LaTeX functionality to vBulletin forums. A number of content types are supported:
  1. Posts
  2. Previews
  3. Messages
  4. Blogs
  5. Signatures
  6. Events
  7. Notes
  8. Announcements

Forum content is intercepted, parsed and any contained LaTeX then rendered into the corresponding image.

Images are generated asynchronously, meaning that the new-post submit time remains largely unaffected, for example.

The plugin maintains its own image cache. LaTeX is rendered once when content is added or changed - any subsequent views will use the rendered image.

The plugin has the capability to regenerate the LaTeX images, so the image cache can be cleared at any time.

Demo


The plugin has builtin support for common LaTeX rendering processes. MikTex (windows) and LaTeX (linux) are used in conjunction with DviPng to generate high resolution PNG images.
Support for PNG transparency in IE6 is added automatically.

MimeTeX is also supported. MimeTeX is a lightweight substitute to the standard LaTeX programs and is the quickest way to get up and running. The rendered LaTeX is not as high quality when compared to DviPng so pick the one that best suits your needs.
See below for example images:
DviPng

MimeTeX

Requirements


This plugin requires a PHP4.4+ and MySQL 4+ capable web server/host as well as a working installation of vBulletin 3.6+.

Current Version (0.8)


This plugin is still in development

Installation


  1. Copy the latexprocessor folder to the products folder at the root of your vBulletin installation. NOTE: If the products folder doesn't exist you must create it.
  2. In the latexprocessor folder, under the includes/xml folder there are two xml files. Copy these two xml files to the includes/xml folder in your vBulletin installation.
  3. From the vBulletin control panel, on the left navigation menu, expand the "Plugins & Products" menu and click "Manage Products".
  4. In the "Installed Products" screen click "Add/Import Product".
  5. In the "Import Product" screen do not specify a file to upload. Instead import the product from the xml file you copied earlier to the vBulletin /includes/xml folder. The path to that xml file is: ./includes/xml/product-latex_processor.xml
  6. Click "Import". The Latex Processor product is installed and configured.

Download

This plugin is still in development.
Creative Commons License The The LaTeX Processor Forum Plugin article by Bobby Soares, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.


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