4.17 Equation Formatting

Unfortunately there no HTML elements for formatting equations. HTML 3 proposed a rudimentary mathematical markup language, but this approach was dropped several years ago -- it is only supported by the experimental Arena browser, and even there to only a limited degree.

There is no longer any effort at adding mathematics support to HTML. Instead, the W3C has developed a language called MathML designed specifically for representing mathematical expressions. This language is defined in detail on the World Wide Web Consortium Web site, at http://www.w3.org/Math/. Note that there are a few browsers and browser plugins that can display MathML documents -- links to these are found at the page listed above.

A useful option for the mathematically inclined is to use LaTex2HTML to convert LaTex files (containing equations) to gif files, and to then use "giftrans" (see the the above URL) which can convert GIF's into transparent GIF89a format. These can be included within the document as inlined images using the IMG tag. This is far from ideal, but is useful for those who are familiar with TeX/LaTeX.

If you want to include greek symbols and simple equations, but don't want the bother of using Latex and latex2html (yes, it can be a real bother!), then have a look at Karen Strom's collection of GIF images. They are really very good, and suprisingly easy to use You will find more information at http://donald.phast.umass.edu/kicons/greek.html.