10.3. The magic behind the math

It's not the math behind the magic - so you don't have to be afraid of being drown in formulas! Just read on to delve into the details of math document processing that goes behind the scenes while you are drinking that (hopefully not cold) cup of coffee.

The idea behind the DBTeXMath method used here relies on the fact that, as we saw in the code example in Chapter 10 above, all the TeX code for typesetting the equation is contained between the <alt> tags inside the <equation> tags. The <alt> tag is somehow “misused” for this purpose, but we will not bother about this for the moment (see the discussion in Section 10.4). DBTeXMath tweaks the stylesheets in order to let the TeX code

• be processed and converted in bitmapped images of PNG and BMP format, for HTML, resp. RTF, or

• be processed and typeset directly for PDF and PS.

The code between the <math> tags is completely ignored - in fact, it is deleted. The steps in more detail: