[Tex/LaTex] Create a web site with Tex/Latex Support + Preview feature

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(This is a question that is more or less not a Tex/Latex question, I guess. But it still relates to Tex/Latex.)

I want to create a new web site. Here is the goals for that site:

  • It will be used to write things about mathematics.

  • Different from Wikipedia and PlanetMath, its goal is to make things about a subject into a (mathematical) book. This means:

    • For the subject "Differential Geometry", there is a page which is the "Table of Content".

    • When a user click the link "Chapter 3 : Curvature", it will go to the page of chpater 3. This page has contents before the 1st section of chapter 3 starts.

    • I wish that there is a way to convert each subject in this site into a PDF file. This output PDF file will looks just like a mathematical book!

    • This site has full Tex/Latex support. So people can write things by using Tex/Latex.
      I also want this site has a preview feature like sites on StackExchange: when people type Tex/Latex code, they can preview the output.

  • The people can contribute to this project.

In order to have the features listed above, could you suggest me some references to learn. For example, how to make this site with Tex/Latex support + Preview. (With these features, it can be used as an online Tex/Latex Editor.)

Best Answer

This week I gave a presentation on Sphinx, a Python-based multi-format publishing tool. It can generate LaTeX, Epub, HTML and many other formats from reStructedText, a markup-format.

It was originally designed to generate documentation for Python software but can do much more.

You can find the (German) slides in my blog at Sphinx Introduction. Mathematics is well supported through MathJax, one can use LaTeX Syntax directly. I have uploaded a sample to http://uweziegenhagen.de/sphinx/ and would be happy to share my findings. I intend to use it to create Epub versions of my articles. It is not directly a website-software, but the results are pretty nice a worth to have a look at.

If you want to host a website to collaborate with others my choice would be to create a MediaWiki site with MathSupport. There are extensions available which allow you to convert the Wiki syntax into LaTeX such as Wiki2LaTeX.

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