LaTeX is a widely used document markup language and a document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Whereas iTeX can be seen as a downgraded LaTeX. The differences arising because of the way we write a research paper (long and technical) and the way we put stuff on the web (short and snappier). Essentially iTeX is a pure converter whereas LaTeX is a mixture of a converter and renderer (technically LaTeX is the rules to convert the input to TeX which is then rendered by TeX).
iTeX is very similar to the Standard LaTeX but with a few differences keeping in mind that iTeX produces MathML.
There are quite a bit of differences between iTeX and TeX :
1. In iTeX $abc$ would be a single token which when converted to MathML would be <mi>abc</abc>
However $a b c$ would be three tokens which when converted to MathML will be <mi>a</mi><mi>b</mi><mi>c</mi>
but it is important to note that the TeX considers both the above to be the same.
2. Numbers: $10^20$ will be 10^(20) in iTeX whereas it will be 10^(2)0 in LaTeX , hence it is always safe to use curly brackets to be consistent across like $10^{20}$
3. Whitespace : $a \textrm{ and } b$ will be x and y in LaTeX whereas in iTeX it will be xandy. The reason behind this being the fact that mtext elements in MathMl doesn’t have fore and aft whitespaces.
4. As MathML doesn’t know the difference between unary operators and binary relations it is inconvenient for iTeX to do so.
5. iTeX doesn’t parse math if it includes non-ascii characters
6. It is possible to insert MathML markup inside iTeX equations making “<” and “>” pretty significant. \lt and \gt are used to get less-than and greater-than signs.
A much more detailed look into LaTeX will follow up in the next post.
References:
1. http://www.latex-project.org/guides/
2. http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/itex2MML.html
iTeX is very similar to the Standard LaTeX but with a few differences keeping in mind that iTeX produces MathML.
There are quite a bit of differences between iTeX and TeX :
1. In iTeX $abc$ would be a single token which when converted to MathML would be <mi>abc</abc>
However $a b c$ would be three tokens which when converted to MathML will be <mi>a</mi><mi>b</mi><mi>c</mi>
but it is important to note that the TeX considers both the above to be the same.
2. Numbers: $10^20$ will be 10^(20) in iTeX whereas it will be 10^(2)0 in LaTeX , hence it is always safe to use curly brackets to be consistent across like $10^{20}$
3. Whitespace : $a \textrm{ and } b$ will be x and y in LaTeX whereas in iTeX it will be xandy. The reason behind this being the fact that mtext elements in MathMl doesn’t have fore and aft whitespaces.
4. As MathML doesn’t know the difference between unary operators and binary relations it is inconvenient for iTeX to do so.
5. iTeX doesn’t parse math if it includes non-ascii characters
6. It is possible to insert MathML markup inside iTeX equations making “<” and “>” pretty significant. \lt and \gt are used to get less-than and greater-than signs.
A much more detailed look into LaTeX will follow up in the next post.
References:
1. http://www.latex-project.org/guides/
2. http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/itex2MML.html
