# [texhax] Curley W

Matthew Leingang leingang at math.harvard.edu
Fri Dec 21 17:24:50 CET 2007

On Dec 21, 2007, at 10:37 AM, Aaron Gray wrote:

>> On Dec 20, 2007, at 2:31 PM, Aaron Gray wrote:
>>
>>> I am wondering how to render a Curley W in TeX.
>>>
>>> http://www.diku.dk/undervisning/2006-2007/2006-2007_b2_246/
>>> milner78theory.pdf
>>>
>>
>> Dear Aaron,
>>
>> Try the mathrsfs package.  It's pretty close.
>>
>> \documentclass{article}
>> \usepackage{mathptmx}
>> \usepackage{mathrsfs}
>> \begin{document}
>> To be precise, we show that if $\mathscr W(\bar p,f)$ succeeds and
>> returns $(T,\bar f)$, then $(T\bar p)|f$ is a wt.
>> \end{document}
>
> Hello Matthew,
>
> Thanks for the reply. I am using MediaWiki (WikiPedia's software) and
> unfortunately that does not support \usepackage{} :(

Ah, you should have said so earlier.  See MediaWiki's own page [1]
for the full story. You could try using CSS to instruct the web
browser to select a scriptlike font.  I believe Wikipedia's policy
[2] is to use wikitext or HTML to render math unless it's only
possible with LaTeX.  This way the page remains machine-readable
(sort of).  So something like

<span style="font-family: 'zapf chancery', cursive;">W</span>

should work.  You can make that a template to avoid code repetition.

> Out of interest I have MediaWiki running on my own Linux server, do
> you know
> is there anyway to preload packages ?

Yes, there's got to be a way.  The sure-fire way would be to search
the MediaWiki source code.  The way these math-on-the web programs
work is they take text, write it into a file, then run (la)tex on the
file.   The temporary file needs a preamble, so if you find where
it's written you can just update that preamble.  Whoever wrote this
particular extension to MW may have built in some customization
mechanism that would do this for you, but I don't know.

Judging on your next paragraph, however, I think your best bet is a
solution within the current MW configuration.

> Also I dont even know how to run TeX on the command line, can I put
> the code
> in a .tex file then run tex on it ? I should experiment with this.

In the olden days this was the only way to use tex.  Look at the TUG
site (see "more links" at the end of the message) for information on
that.

Hope that helps!

--Matt

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Formula
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%
28mathematics%29#Typesetting_of_mathematical_formulas

--
Matthew Leingang
Preceptor in Mathematics
Harvard University

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~leingang/vCard.vcf