Question: Every once in a while I miss having the option to write some LaTeX math on SO. E.g. when [talking about automata](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/885411/how-do-i-build-this-finite-automaton). I'm certainly [not the only one](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1106929/find-all-combinations-of-coins-when-given-some-dollar-value/1106968#1106968). And I think the person answering [this question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1055098/how-do-i-design-the-transition-functions-for-this-pushdown-automaton) would have appreciated it as well. I'm sure there are more examples.

It can be done, look e.g. at the [Physics forums](http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=8997). Multiple solutions exits, either by converting the LaTeX code to an image or MathML.

Since the fields of theoretical computer science and computer programming overlap (formal languages, data structures, ...), and because plenty of users are acquainted with LaTeX, I think it makes sense to provide support for mathematical notation on SO. What do you think?

Answer: 
<http://mathbin.heroku.com> works kind of like a code paste bin for math equations. It has an embed option, but it doesn't work with SO because it uses a `script` tag. It's a quick work around as you don't have to URL encode the LaTeX string. You also have to include the LaTeX string as part of your post in case someone decides to edit it and hit save.
As long as computational geometry and numeric computation are part of the project, LaTeX seems surely a required feature. It is stupid to ask people to generate and upload formula images.

You could place the supporting renderer into separate server that would receive the equation URL-encoded, returning image in response. This probably would allow to use one of existing engines. It took about two days to integrate [JLaTeXMath](http://forge.scilab.org/index.php/p/jlatexmath/) into [my own project](http://ultrastudio.org/en/Help_on_editing) that way.