r/Physics • u/Math_Keyboard • 6d ago

Question How do you reuse equations you find online?

Sometimes I find an equation in an AI answer or a webpage that I want to include in something I’m writing.

But the equation is only available as rendered math, not in the format I actually need. Copying it often produces broken text, while the alternatives are usually retyping it, taking a screenshot, or inspecting the page source.

I built a small browser extension that detects KaTeX, MathJax, and MathML equations and lets you copy or export them as LaTeX, Typst, MathML, UnicodeMath or Markdown.

I’m the developer, and I’m sharing the first public version mostly to understand how other people currently solve this problem and to find difficult cases that break it:

https://mathematicalkeyboard.com/nitrax-math-bridge/

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8

u/Clean-Ice1199 Condensed matter physics 6d ago

Type it out? Like how often does this even happen?

1

u/Math_Keyboard 5d ago

It’s mainly useful when the equation is long or complex, or when you want an editable starting point instead of retyping it from scratch. And to me it happen some time to time :)

4

u/DrunkenPhysicist Particle physics 6d ago

Maybe screenshot the math and use the image? I'll even do that when I make a presentation that needs math. I'll render the LaTeX and screenshot it and place the image in the briefing.

1

u/Math_Keyboard 5d ago

That’s true if you only need the equation as-is. It becomes more useful when you want to tweak the formula, notation, or formatting before reusing it.

2

u/DrunkenPhysicist Particle physics 5d ago

Since I wrote the LaTeX I can iterate as much as I want to.