So in my
small periods of free time recently, I’ve picked up an old project of mine. As part of my long-term plans for the Syracuse project, I am creating a mathematical TeX (ultimately LaTeX) renderer for .NET 4.0.
My recent investigations led me to the JMathTeX library, which is a pure Java renderer for the mathematical subset of the TeX system. Me being a C# fan rather a Java one (who starts projects in Java these days anyway?), I decided to port the whole thing to C#/.NET and use the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) as the front end. Plans are to eventually integrate (most of) the functionality from JLatexMath into the .NET library too, giving a very complete and stylish renderer for mathematical formulae/renderer. With a bit of luck, I may even be able to integrate the renderer directly with my TeX.NET library, thus eliminating (at least in theory) the need to use TeX syntax for rendering.
To my surprise, I’ve actually had a lot of success on this port. The code is still pretty horrendous in some ways, as it’s all written in Java rather than C# style, not to mention I’ve had to hack a few things to get it to work. Nonetheless, it seems to be rendering just as well as the original Java library, or so my small example demonstrates. The complete code is available from my personal Bazaar repository here, which I ought to be updating regularly. All you need to compile and test is an installation of the .NET 4.0 framework and Visual Studio 2010 RC.
Check back for further updates soon, as I hope to be posting some screenshots of the software in action. Given that I’ve largely put a lid on serious programming with all the other things going on in my life at the moment, it may be some while before any official release… still, feel free to check out the rough work so far.
