The following open source tools are used to develop the homeschool elementary and highschool level math teaching and benchmark package.
1. Mathematical package in Javascript: jsxgraph.css, jsxgraphcore.js. Note that the .css does not have to be specified in the header.php file. The use of cross-browser standards works well with packages such as webkit to generate pdf or image documents with less coding efforts.
2. Cross-browser HTML document rendering to .png/.jpg or .pdf format (with jQuery support). Testing is primarily done on Firefox and Safari. Need to check on Internet Explorer.
3. Simplify php coding with HTML/CSS rendering such as webkit engine.
Executable: wkhtmltox/bin/wkhtmltoimage, or wkhtmltopdf (requires glibc 10, Fedore Core 11 or later).
Usage:
bin/wkhtmltoimage jsxtest.htm jsxtest.jpg
bin/wkhtmltoimage periodictable.php.htm periodictable.png
bin/wkhtmltoimage ‘http://www.yahoo.com’ yahoo.png
(To delay for mathjax loading)
bin/wkhtmltoimage –enable-javascript –debug-javascript –javascript-delay 5000 jsxtest.htm jsxtest.jpg
4. Install TrueType font support at /usr/share/fonts/default/
Font seems to show correctly only on Windows test (Verdana and Impact are okay on Webkit Linux base).
5. MathJax and TeX support takes about 174 MB of storage.
Tests:
1. Linear equation (f(x)=ax+b).
2. Quadratic equation (f(x)=ax^2+bx+c) (with focus and directrix).
3. Hyperbolic equation (with focus and directrix).
4. Trigonometric circle.
5. Polar coordinates (special functions, spirals).
6. Polynomial functions.
7. Trigonometric functions (Cartesian and polar coordinates).
8. Exponential functions (with log scale).
9. TeX features (fractions, roots, derivatives, integrals, summations).
– Fraction notation: css font definition (issue with font-family), unicode character
10. jQuery to control HTML element placement. Option to generate pdf or printer-friendly format.