Easy WP LaTeX provides a very easy way to display equations or mathematical formulas (typed in as TeX or LaTeX code) in your posts. It lets you customize colors and sizes of your equations to match your blog theme.
Live Demo
If you would like to see this plugin action, visit this physics post. You can even play with its admin interface at the live demo site.
Most LaTeX/equation plugins I have seen suffer from a few drawbacks.
- They require installations of TeX or other packages on your server.
- They are fairly inflexible in terms of colors of text and background.
- Each time you switch your theme, you have to re-configure your color scheme.
- They may not let you choose how to input LaTeX code. ([math]…[/math] or $$…$$) without editing the plugin code.
My plugin aims to be flexible, and easy to install (no geeky code editing etc.). It is now available in your own language using machine translation curtsey of Google and Microsoft.
Pro Version
This release is the freely distributed version of Easy WP LaTeX. It is fully functional. But the Pro Version gives you more features and benefits.
- In the Pro version, the plugin caches the formula images so that your pages load faster.
- You also get an option to align the formula image with respect to the text around it by tweaking the vertical alignment of your equations.
- Option to store the images in the database using WP transients API for potentially faster page loads.
New features and bug fixes will first appear in the Pro version before being ported to this freely distributed edition.
Alternatives
- Latex for WordPess by zhiqiang, on which this plugin is based, has caching and JS based image generation. But it lacks intuitive color matching and theme-dependent settings.
- JetPack also lets you insert LaTeX formulas, again color matching is not easy.
Credit
- Easy WP LaTeX uses the excellent Javascript color picker by [Javascript Color Picker] (http://jscolor.com “Javascript Color Picker”).