U
sing the very fine
tex2im, which corrals the relevant TeX programs on the server (latex, dvips, convert), I can now pop in math equations as images, thusly:
\sum{i=0}5 xi2 and f(x) = \sqrt{1+x} \quad (x \ge -1 )
just by typing:
[tex]\sum{i=0}5 xi2 [/tex]
[tex]f(x) = \sqrt{1+x} \quad (x \ge -1 )[/tex]
The first time the page comes up the images are generated on the fly (takes a few seconds), but from then on are available as a regular image. I'll add this feature to the discussion forums too. It will really make the math/physics stuff I want to discuss much better. You just surround your TeX code with [tex]…[/tex] tags. (note: I changed this from <tex> tags which I started with.)
I was pulling out my hair there for a while trying to figure out whether PHP was holding me back or permissions or something else, and it was something else: the paths inside of tex2im which pointed to the other scripts had to be given absolute paths. Spun my wheels for a bit there, but it works now.
I was going to present the equations using the transparency option, but the results are not as nice looking, so I just put them in white boxes instead.