General ⇒ Collaborative online math using LaTeX

[nispio]

A friend and I have been using some of the LaTeX bots for Google Wave (latexy, watexy) to collaborate on homework problems. It was really convenient, because it combined elements of chat with being able to express complex mathematical expressions.

Now that Wave is dying out, and so are the bots, Wave will not be an option for this type of collaboration. What other options available to us? We don't really need to create a document, just embed mathematical expressions into our conversations.

One thing that I considered was that there must be some sort of open-source engine that generates images from LaTeX expressions on the fly. For example, how does Wikipedia generate all of its equation images? Is there some way that we could tap into that same engine, or otherwise create our own "LaTex server" that would allow us to easily convert a single LaTeX expression into an image?

I apologize if this is not the right place for a question of this nature, but I am having a tough time finding information leads that don't bring me back to latexy and watexy (which are now broken.) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[torbjorn t.]

There are LaTeX-plugins for various IM-clients, like pidgin-latex for use with Pidgin.

Google Docs actually uses LaTeX for writing math, as does Wikipedia. Exactly how that happens I'm not sure, but it could be via a service like mathTeX. Some additional information on Mediawiki (software used by Wikipedia) and LaTeX, can be found in the Mediawiki-wiki: http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?ti ... ex&button=