mathematics in HTML

[merickson]

I am putting a page together that involves a lot of math. The problem is the greek letters. Few computers have the PHYSICA font avaliable.

I see three solutions, each with their own problems.

1) Use equivalants such as â for alpha. The problem is that there is nothing even close to theta or pi.

2) Make .gif's of each of the greek letters. The problem is matching the letter size to the font preferances that my guests have set on their browser.

3) Make .gif's of each of the equations. Yikes!!! the file size.

Does anyone have experience in this area?

[aphel aura]

Use Arial. That font set have all maths and Greek symbols and it's easy for you if you use a WYSIWYG editor.

[merickson]

The ARIAL that I have does not have an alpha or a theta.
I'm thinking that I will go with gifs of each letter.
This might make print out a pain, but I could provide a PHYSICA version on request. Or I could offer them a method to download the font.

[aphel aura]

Try looking at this page here (http://gtogaleri.yoll.net/greek.htm) .

I've created that page consisting alpha and theta non-capital letters, using Arial which I'm sure everyone have in their computers.

[merickson]

I clicked on that and saw:

? = alpha
? = theta

I guess that the Arial on my Mac doesn't have those characters.
I am surprised that our society's math anxiety has kept the computer geeks from choosing theta as one of their oddball characters.
I thought that Physica was a wide spread font for physicists. I just found out that its an oddball developed by Rod Cole at UC Davis that hasn't gone very far.

How widespread is SYMBOL?

[aphel aura]

How widespread is SYMBOL?

Not really sure, but I have it installed in my font folder. Probably your Arial font was oudated. You are using OSX 10.2?

[merickson]

No, I'm using OS 9.
But, if I have an outdated font, then so will some of the guests to my site.
That's one of the reasons that my site is being built without bells and whistles. My first priority is to get my content to my guests. Looking at some other sites, it seems that using the latest techniques and capabilities is a priority.
I'm conservative enough in my design philosophy (both for woodwork and for websites) that I want it to work no matter what. I suspect that my website will show the equivalent of the over-engineering that my woodwork does.

[Gayowulf]

I'd say your best bet is to provide a copy of the PHYSICA font for your viewers.

[Vizjerai]

I was looking around one day and I came accross MathML, it's supported in Mozilla 1.1+ and Netscape 7.0+ not sure about IE you can read more about it at http://www.w3.org/Math/

I was looking at it and it looks like a lot more trouble then it's worth since only new browsers can view it correctly and it is still in development.

[merickson]

Thanks for the tip. My current thinking is to use gifs. I am also putting that project on the back shelf in favor of others.

[aphel aura]

How about embedded fonts?

http://www.devshed.com/Client_Side/DHTML/EmbeddedFonts/page1.html