I do have in mind to build, on future, a science forum, in where Math Symbols would be very important in orther to express formulas.
On other side It would be a plus for WSN Forum to have a good management of math symbols in order it be recongized very useful for the side of the forums market related with science.
So my suggestion is in order to improve the usage of math symbols and maybe for WSN Forum to become recognized for the ease on it's usage for posting formulas.
Hope you feel motivated for this front of developlment/achievement
Not realistically unless someone paid for it as a custom project. It'd require creating tons of images (or tracking down public domain versions), and dynamically splicing the images together based on gazillions of LaTex codes. Estimate 8-12 hours.
If you check the LaTex proyect, do you believe the dowloadable version can be plugged into the forum? This way you will not need to rebuild the images isn't it ? Or would it be a conflict with the license ?
Could it be possible to have it as a plug in ? so every member can download it fot a fee.
This way you can pay all the hours you need to invest on developing, testing and updating it, and for each member the cost will be less than having to finance it completly.
I'd love it if that were practical, but since there are extremely few WSN Forum customers I'd bet a lot of money that you'd be the only person to buy the plugin.
I'm pondering whether making WSN Forum free (with only customers getting support, installation etc) would be beneficial, though I'm leaning against it because the $850 which WSN Forum sales totaled this year is still $850 I'd hate to risk losing. And the old free edition wasn't popular, and phpBB has a virtual monopoly on mindshare for free forums.
a) I believe that this plug in can be implemented not only for the Forum but also for the other scripts so this way you will have lot more customers for it. Could it possible to work it this way ?
b) I personally do not believe on the free scripts. They work when there's a community of people supporting them but this is not the case.
I believe that if you are considering something for free would be worth to have an entire complete new site devoted only for free basic versions of your scripts and intended to bring customers to the full versions of your scripts. The free versions with not too much features in order the people not to see any potencial bugs. This site devoted for free versions would be intended to convert people that want more features into customers of WSN Scripts.
Let me mention what I feel an important related point I. It is related to bugs. To bring new customers and to maintain the current ones I see very important try not to have any bugs on the free and specially on payed versions, so it means not liberating new versions so frequently and dedicated more time to debugging. I really prefer versions that work perfect than the ones that have a lot of features but not all of them fully tested. This is a feeling I would like to mention since time ago. There's a value on things working great. We need to count on all the features that we have even though they are few ones. With this in mind for shure more customers will come as the excellence bring and maintain customers by itself.
Nobody would want a LaTeX plugin for anything other than a forum -- and even then, only for the rare forum that deals with math. I've tried selling add-ons that ought to have much bigger audiences, like the DMOZ import, and still found very few takers.
The idea of a free forum would be to attract people to the rest of the scripts. Once they build a community with their forum they may want to add the other stuff. If it brought 5 additional sales a year to all the other scripts combined (or if it brought in 5 WSN Forum support contract sales), it'd be paying off. Probably unrealistic, but I've tried everything else.
Development has slowed as far as it can, I think, by taking a year between new series. Beta releases of each point version might be a good idea, but nobody would use them. The only way to find more bugs is to have more users.
...Once they build a community with their forum they may want to add the other stuff
One of this staff would be the LaTex plugin. Could it be possible for you to considering building a stock of buyable stuff from now ?
...or if it brought in 5 WSN Forum support contract sales),...
...The only way to find more bugs is to have more users.
Don´t you believe that appart of focusing on finding more users would be important too to focuse on the current users, the ones that reached a point on where they feel fans of WSN Scripts, this before they get dissapointed because of the too many bugs/non well performing features ?
Don´t you believe these people would be glad on supporting a support/maintenance annual fee in order you to spend more time checking all the features and not expecting all the reports comming from the current members with the possibility that they get dissapointed ?
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Comments on Math Symbols
Forum Regular
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Paul,
I do have in mind to build, on future, a science forum,
in where Math Symbols would be very important in orther to express formulas.
On other side It would be a plus for WSN Forum to have a good management of math symbols in order it be recongized very useful for the side of the forums market related with science.
So my suggestion is in order to improve the usage of math symbols and maybe for WSN Forum to become recognized for the ease on it's usage for posting formulas.
Hope you feel motivated for this front of developlment/achievement
Kind Regards
developer
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Location: Diamond Springs, California
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Actually we already have latex -- all the latex codes which have html character equvilants work.
Forum Regular
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Paul,
mimeTex http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html
seems to be interesting as a plugin.
Can you a take a look at it when you have some time .
developer
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It's under the GPL, not the LGPL, so it'd be illegal to include. Besides it's not PHP so I wouldn't be able to adapt it.
Anyhow here's a partial list of what you can use: forums.philosophyforums.com...ads/latex-guide-17869.html
Forum Regular
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Paul,
Could it be possible to implement the LaTex as is implemented and explained at :
www.mathhelpforum.com/math-.../19060-latex-tutorial.html
Daniel.
developer
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Not realistically unless someone paid for it as a custom project. It'd require creating tons of images (or tracking down public domain versions), and dynamically splicing the images together based on gazillions of LaTex codes. Estimate 8-12 hours.
Forum Regular
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Joined: Aug 09, 2004
Location: Chile
Total Topics: 172
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Paul,
If you check the LaTex proyect, do you believe the dowloadable version can be plugged into the forum? This way you will not need to rebuild the images isn't it ?
Or would it be a conflict with the license ?
http://www.latex-project.org/
Daniel.
developer
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Joined: Dec 20, 2001
Location: Diamond Springs, California
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The only "downloadable" thing I see at that site is "TeX Live", a 1.2 gigabyte DVD image which is undoubtedly not in PHP.
Forum Regular
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Can this links be useful ?
http://www.latex-project.org/ftp.html
http://www.mayer.dial.pipex.com/tex.htm
developer
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Joined: Dec 20, 2001
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The phpbb mod's renderer class might make it doable in only 1-2 hours, or it might still take 12 hours if it doesn't work out.
Forum Regular
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Joined: Aug 09, 2004
Location: Chile
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Could it be possible to have it as a plug in ? so every member can download it fot a fee.
This way you can pay all the hours you need to invest on developing, testing and updating it,
and for each member the cost will be less than having to finance it completly.
Daniel.
developer
Usergroup: Administrator
Joined: Dec 20, 2001
Location: Diamond Springs, California
Total Topics: 61
Total Comments: 7868
I'd love it if that were practical, but since there are extremely few WSN Forum customers I'd bet a lot of money that you'd be the only person to buy the plugin.
I'm pondering whether making WSN Forum free (with only customers getting support, installation etc) would be beneficial, though I'm leaning against it because the $850 which WSN Forum sales totaled this year is still $850 I'd hate to risk losing. And the old free edition wasn't popular, and phpBB has a virtual monopoly on mindshare for free forums.
Forum Regular
Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Aug 09, 2004
Location: Chile
Total Topics: 172
Total Comments: 462
Paul,
a) I believe that this plug in can be implemented not only for the Forum but also for the other scripts so this way you will have lot more customers for it. Could it possible to work it this way ?
b) I personally do not believe on the free scripts. They work when there's a community of people supporting them but this is not the case.
I believe that if you are considering something for free would be worth to have an entire complete new site devoted only for free basic versions of your scripts and intended to bring customers to the full versions of your scripts. The free versions with not too much features in order the people not to see any potencial bugs. This site devoted for free versions would be intended to convert people that want more features into customers of WSN Scripts.
Let me mention what I feel an important related point I. It is related to bugs. To bring new customers and to maintain the current ones I see very important try not to have any bugs on the free and specially on payed versions, so it means not liberating new versions so frequently and dedicated more time to debugging. I really prefer versions that work perfect than the ones that have a lot of features but not all of them fully tested. This is a feeling I would like to mention since time ago. There's a value on things working great. We need to count on all the features that we have even though they are few ones. With this in mind for shure more customers will come as the excellence bring and maintain customers by itself.
Daniel.
developer
Usergroup: Administrator
Joined: Dec 20, 2001
Location: Diamond Springs, California
Total Topics: 61
Total Comments: 7868
Nobody would want a LaTeX plugin for anything other than a forum -- and even then, only for the rare forum that deals with math. I've tried selling add-ons that ought to have much bigger audiences, like the DMOZ import, and still found very few takers.
The idea of a free forum would be to attract people to the rest of the scripts. Once they build a community with their forum they may want to add the other stuff. If it brought 5 additional sales a year to all the other scripts combined (or if it brought in 5 WSN Forum support contract sales), it'd be paying off. Probably unrealistic, but I've tried everything else.
Development has slowed as far as it can, I think, by taking a year between new series. Beta releases of each point version might be a good idea, but nobody would use them. The only way to find more bugs is to have more users.
Forum Regular
Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Aug 09, 2004
Location: Chile
Total Topics: 172
Total Comments: 462
One of this staff would be the LaTex plugin. Could it be possible for you to considering building a stock of buyable stuff from now ?
Don´t you believe that appart of focusing on finding more users would be important too to focuse on the current users, the ones that reached a point on where they feel fans of WSN Scripts, this before they get dissapointed because of the too many bugs/non well performing features ?
Don´t you believe these people would be glad on supporting a support/maintenance annual fee in order you to spend more time checking all the features and not expecting all the reports comming from the current members with the possibility that they get dissapointed ?