Google Charting API and Formula Imaging

Update: 3rd Oct, the link to the chart playground should now work after Google appeared to have moved things around, if it breaks again, just visit code.google.com, and go to the charting section.

Recently I wrote an article and it used some formula, and had the formula shown in text format which ends up with the likes of the following;

α = 2Atan( H1 / ( √(((2H1D)/2)-H12)))

I am sure you would agree that it doesn't look very pretty. I wanted to turn this into something more presentable.

In the end, I came across Google Chart Tools / Image Tools here[^], which use the TeX notation for building graphical representations on formula.

A little more hunting and I found a useful cheat sheet for TeX Notation here[^]

Putting things together, you can then save the outputed image for your local use. Here is the example from the above in text linked directly to the Google API:

The API construct for this is:

cht=tx
chl=\alpha=2Atan{\HUGE[}\frac{H_{1}}{\sqrt((\frac{2H_{1}D}{2})-H_{1}^2)}{\HUGE]}

For more information, click here[^] to take you to this API page with this example already loaded.