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Textual Information
We have to distinguish two very different instances: textual submissions by students, and textual presentations by instructors.

Submissions by students
Aside from calculations, reports, written comments and so on don't really need anything more than a text editor. It is true that it could be convenient, occasionally, to be able to write mathematical formulas (not nearly as often as in most other math courses, though). This can be done in a text editor by using what is colloquially known as "typewriter math".

If a more pleasant looking presentation is **really** needed (but it seems superfluous for student submissions), there are many tools, open source and not, for that. I would (and do) strongly discourage the submission of material in proprietary formats, as that assumes that the instructor has unfettered access to the appropriate proprietary software, and there is no reason to assume that. Since there is little need for anything more complex than pure text, anything more elaborate should conform to minimal universal readability. Additionally, disseminating documents in wprd processing formats (proprietary or not) is a generally bad idea: such documents include all (or most) of the redaction history, including parts that were deleted when the author realized they were inappropriate, and, depending on the configuration, may also include personal and technical information about the author, the installation, and so on. Last but not least, all such documents allow the inclusion of Macros and are therefore prone to carrying malware if the author's computer is compromised. Such document formats make only sense in a collaborative setting, when several people are working jointly on a document, and are exchanging files that obviously should be amenable to editing by the recipients.

My suggestions for student submission would be, based on practical experience,


 * Text files, as discussed above.
 * PDF or, even easier to produce, PostScript (just "print to file" on a printer, which may not actually exist physically, but that uses PostScript).
 * Graphic files, obtained by scanning or photographing handwritten work. Files in JEPG, TIFF, EPS, formats are universally accessible. In the case of photographs, students should take care to verify that the image is indeed readable!


 * We could also consider HTML. However, if formulas are to be included, the low quality method of linking PNG or GIF images can create a clumsy bundle of files that need to be sent all together. HTML5 will support MathML, and MathML is suported already in a browsers such as Opera and Firefox (IE8 requires an additional plug-in). However, authoring tools for MathML are possibly beyond the need of a student.

Postings by Instructors
The issue facing instructors is that there is a need to produce files that include, besides text, images and, more seriously, mathematical formulas **that need to be displayed as clearly as possible**. Also, whatever the format in which content will be published, nowadays there is a need to produce HTML pages, whether the class is on line or not.

There is no lack of tools to do this, but it is important to keep a few considerations in mind.

=Word Processors=

Almost all word processors come with formula editors, and this seems the simplest choice. There are at least a couple of caveats, though:


 * More often than not, the quality of the output is, to put it kindly, not first notch. This imposes unnecessary hardship on a reader, who may have already other reasons to be unenthusiastic about mathematical formulas.
 * All such editors allow for HTML editing, but the result is definitely not the prettiest, in terms of code. As mentioned below, there are compromise choices that combine a relatively economical HTML code with the ability to include formulas in MathML form (instead of clumsy, and most often ugly, graphic images).
 * Apparently, the temptation to **post** the file in the editor's native format seems irresistible for many. This is a very bad habit for more than one reason. One issue is that, in many cases, the format is proprietary, and thus would force readers to acquire commercial software that they would not otherwise need. This may often be mitigated by the availability of free readers, but compatibility with formula display is not always guaranteed. More important, though, is that there is no conceivable reason why someone would put out an **editable** file, that could be manipulated by anyone. Even worse, all such word processors (proprietary or open source) include a whole mass of meta-data in their files, including all corrections, and false starts, and also, possibly (depending on how they were installed), personal information about the author. It makes absolutely no sense to send out such information out in the wild. As already mentioned, these files are also easy to be turned into malware vectors if the computer on which they are written has been compromised

If a "traditional" word processor is absolutely to be used, the output should be posted in PDF format (PostScript would also do, but many students would need a little help in getting a reader for PS - not that this is difficult, of course). An interesting alternative is XHTML, with MathML. This format is easily produced by AbiWord, and TeXmacs (see below), and is read natively by Firefox and Opera.

=HTML Editors=

While one can code the inevitable web pages by hand, it is certainly easier to rely on a good hand-holding editor. Word processors offer an alternative, but they usually produce bloated code. Depending on whether we want MathML formulas to be included or not, we have leaner choices. For MathML:


 * Amaya is a browser/HTML visual editor supported by the web standards organization W3C, and supports MathML if needed. It also enforces adherence to standards which is not a bad thing at all!
 * GNU/TexMacs is a point-and-click visual editor for scientific content. If instructed from the preferences menu, it will export to a frugal XHTML file, with good MathML support.
 * AbiWord is a standard word processor. The XHTML output includes quite a bit of headers, in order to cover all the bases, but it does support MathML easily. The syntax it uses for mathematical formulas is a simple subset of LaTex, which may be actually another advantage it has.

If formulas are not involved, there are excellent visual HTML editors out there. As examples, we have


 * //Amaya//, already discussed
 * //Kompozer//
 * //Quanta Plus//
 * A less elegant (in terms of code produced) alternative is //Seamonkey//, a complete suite of web applications that is the direct descendant of the Netscape suite, which includes "//Composer//", a simple visual editor for HTML.

=Professional Quality Editors=

The serious way to produce mathematical (as well as any other, by the way) content is to write your material in LaTex. The quantity of LaTex software available for free is immense. The drawback is that LaTex is a very vast tool, which requires some serious effort to master. For the lazier among us who would prefer a shortcut there are several free tools (and also some extremely expensive ones):


 * A simple mostly point-and-click option is //lyx// http://www.lyx.org, available for most platforms. Lyx is not quite a TeX editor, but it communicates reasonably well with LaTeX and produces TeX-quality outputs as DVI or PDF files, as well as LaTeX (it also exports to HTML, but formulas are turned into graphic files). It is not a WYSIWYG editor: it is proud of letting you concentrate on your content, while it takes care of the formatting. A couple of experiments with the built-in layouts should make your choice easy.
 * Another great option, that does have a WYSIWYG interface is TeXmacs, providing very easy point-and-click formula building, with many sophisticated options, including color both for text **and** mathematical formulas. It exports to PDF, DVI and LaTeX. As mentioned, it also exports very well to XHTML/MathML.
 * As mentioned, there are commercial offerings, such as the full version of //Scientific Workplace// (the cheaper limited sub-editions offer limited output facilities), which does offer many advantages, but whose license was, last time I checked, just shy of $1000.

Graphing Utilities
While there is an abundance of open source tools to present graphics in sophisticated form, this is much less of a necessity in our context, and a spreadsheet will be able to produce most or all the graphics that may be really needed. Still, you might want to occasionally produce a good-looking function graph, and there are good tools for that:


 * //Kmplot//
 * //euler//
 * //gnuplot//
 * //qtiplot//

These programs use natively a vector graphics format, which is best, as it preserves quality regardless of the scaling. They all support exporting to raster formats (like JPEG, TIFF, and so on), as well as standard vector graphics formats like SVG (an HTML5 standard).

The list of open source graphic programs, for general pictures is enromous, of course. A small and less well known graphic editor, which conveneontly uses LaTeX to embed mathematical expressions in the picture, and also produces natively vector graphics, that do not suffer from rescaling is //IPE//

Incidentally, there are nice Opera applets for this purpose. You might need a utility to clip the picture into a graphic file.