Equations with Markdown and Svbtle

Markdown is a very simple markup language that’s quite popular right now, notably it is the one used by Svbtle. Markdown was mostly designed for casual writing, but it turns out that I casually write things in ways that most people don’t.

When I don’t write online I use LaTeX. I use it for everything from homework to recipes. It is a tool designed and implemented by Don Knuth and improved by Leslie Lamport (TeX -> LaTeX). LaTeX allows people to write research papers, books etc. and features a complex and powerful markup language. I like LaTeX very much because it allows me to display math equations beautifully. Unfortunately Markdown doesn’t natively allow users to write math in such a fashion.

I did some research and found out it is possible to integrate LaTeX equations with Markdown, except Svbtle doesn’t provide it. The only solution is to embed an image of the equation into your post. However it turns out the specification of Markdown does provide for equations, to be embedded as images (I found only one website mentioning it). So here’s the solution for those who use Svtble or any other site with Markdown:


Simply replace url by the url to an image of your equation. There are websites that can generate images based on LaTeX code. I use: http://www.sciweavers.org/free-online-latex-equation-editor

Example #

{n \choose k} = \frac{n!}{k!(n-k)}

How to: SciWeavers #

SciWeavers doesn’t provide a Markdown embed code, however their “Web Page” embed does work in Markdown. You can also take their web page embed code, extract the url out of the src parameter of the <img> tag and put it back into the correct Markdown function. Both methods will give you the same result on Svbtle.

HiDPI screens #

This won’t be compatible with retina/HiDPI screens for a while on Svbtle. The problem is that Svbtle will ignore all the parameters of an <img> tab, forbidding you to downsize the image.