LiteralMath is a text editor with two additional capabilities:
1. Math notation;
2. Hypertext.
Math notation and hypertext open the field of web math to students, teachers, researchers, people who need to communicate math on the internet. It is aimed at the high school / college environment. We produce not only text, but also clickable hypertext, i.e., links to other web documents.
This screenshot shows that:
• Math notation is displayed exactly as it will appear, either printed or rendered by a browser.
• Many useful math symbols, such as square root, greek letters, fraction signs, etc., are available.
• Equations use a monospaced math font.
LiteralMath owes its Simplicity to nine internal monospaced fonts: this is the best way to ensure horizontal and vertical alignment of symbols, as shown on the example at right. The Matrix brackets are made of adjoining line drawing characters.
Users deal with one collective font named LiteralMath Notation.
The editor processes rich text files in the .rtf format known to Wordpad, Word. It also generates .html files that faithfully reproduce the source. Browsers render math notation at the speed of text.
LiteralMath may be used to apply math notation, hypertext, on existing .rtf texts from other editors, notably Wordpad.
The fundamental theorem of Calculus is seen above from the editor screen, and, at left, as rendered by Internet Explorer.
Our approach to math notation differs from traditional typography. Informal assignments, lecture notes, term papers, don't need the rigors of desktop publishing.
The proposed MathML web math standard is a tremendous challenge to people's minds and browser performance. LiteralMath expresses math with simplicity, clarity, and efficiency.
Line drawing characters let us build brackets, braces, arrows, of arbitrary size. The example illustrates simple box drawing.
