[texhax] latex trough a webbrowser ?

[Karl Berry]

Hi Christoph,

    Is there a posibillity to run latex (we're mostly
    interestet in pdflatex) trough
    a webbrowser window ?  

It seems to me this would be a trivial cgi program to write, if no one
has it to offer offhand.  I feel like I've heard about something like
this already?

For starters, I'd suggest not bothering to "watch" log file, just run
pdflatex and show them the result.  These days, it's fast.  Use
\nonstopmode so user input is not asked for.  Something like:
  system ("pdflatex '\nonstopmode\input foo.tex');
(in your language of choice, of course.)

The painful part would be uploading the tex file -- what if the file
depends on other files?  Could get messy.  If you need a sample cgi for
doing an upload, let me know.

    having to install a total miktex on each of the machines. 

It is also possible to share a TeX installation over the network, if you
have a shared drive for other software.

    or maybe through a java applet ?

Not the right thing, because the applet would run on their local
computer.  Also, an applet shouldn't be able to invoke external programs
anyway.

Hope this helps,
karl