MathMath

A wiki seems like a good way to organize information. Blogs work nice for recording thoughts and links in chronological order, but aren't so good for organizing ideas topically or for revising items. Proto-papers or latex files with background information have been used. The easily edited environment of a wiki seems like it would function well, even if were only used personally (part of the wiki idea is open collaborative editing). The wiki text markup is much lighter than HTML, so it would be easier to deal with than maintaining a set of web pages.

The real issue is integrating mathematics. Mozilla and derivatives can handle MathML (and IE can with a plugin), so that seems like a good route (inserting pictures is marginally okay for converting papers to HTML, but is not as good for a more interactive environment). The only problem with MathML is the rapid onset of RSI if you actually write equations with it.

There are a couple of solutions, both convert TeX or vaguely TeX-like input to MathML. They are itex2mml and AsciiMathML. The second solution seems rather nice, as it uses javascript to convert the TeX-like notation to MathML when the page loads into the browser.

For a wiki, I've been looking into MoinMoin. At first I tried hacking itex2mml into it, and it took quite a few changes to make everything proper XHTML. Then I found the page that describes integrating AsciiMathML into MoinMoin, and that was much smoother.

AsciiMathML also has a nice way of adding new symbols, that doesn't require changing the AsciiMathML.js file.
In keeping with title of this weblog, the Unicode number for hbar is 0x210F. (although it usually only appears once in a paper and is promptly set to "1") The code for adding it is

<script type="text/javascript">
AMsymbols = AMsymbols.concat([
{input:"hbar", tag:"mo", output:"\u210F", tex:"hbar"}
]);
</script>