Re: HTML math fonts?

[Jeff Marx <marxj2@ciue.rpi.edu>]

At 08:38 AM 8/25/97 -0400, you wrote:
> Can someone point me to a good source (web or otherwise) on using math
> symbols on an HTML page?
>
> Thanks
>
> kyle
For all it proposed greatness, the Web is a difficult place to publish
simple mathematical documents.
I don't think what you ask this can be done directly.  There are two
problems.  First, if you include a font tag that tells the computer to
display a simple "symbol" font that will fail unless the computer that is
viewing the page has a symbol font "installed".  I ran into this problem
when trying to make pages with equations in them and then viewed them on
several platforms.  Mac and PC- no problem.  UNIX- problem. Second, there
is no HTML tag to overcome this previous dilemma, but I'm am told you can
use JAVA.  However, if you have a page with a ton of symbols (therefore
lots of java) at the very least it will be slow to load on some machines
and at the very worst you could just crash some of these machines.
I had this very same problem when I wanted to post solutions, problems
sets, etc. on a web page for my students last semester.  My solution was
doing everything in MS Word.  Word 95/6.0 can be updated with Internet
Assistant to permit you to save .docs as .html.  As an added bonus it
converts all (read "most") objects to .gifs and puts them right back where
they should be.  If your objects happen to be equations from the Equation
Editor then Word handles them fairly well and you shouldn't have a problem.
 I'm sure that other word processors can do this as well, this is the only
one that I've had experience with.
Anyone else have any better ideas, I, too, would like to hear about them.
Cheers,
            Jeff