Chatting about mathematics (with real-time LaTeX rendering)

Question

Do you know about some tools which can be used for online chat about mathematics? In particular, I am interested in software which would be able to render LaTeX formulas. (Since LaTeX is probably the fastest possibility to type mathematics.)

Have you tried some of them? What are their advantages and drawbacks?

NOTE 1: In this question I am asking only about solutions how to type mathematics in chat, not about possibility to use video and sound. (For the purposes of this question, assume that only keyboard, mouse and display are plugged to your computer.)

NOTE 2: I will post some possibilities I am aware of in the answers. But I would be grateful if someone who tried these applications could expand these answers a little more.

Answer 1

Mathim - online chat with the possibility to use of LaTeX syntax (the first result that google returned for latex online chat or latex online chat math)

http://mathim.com

Screenshot from my short experiment with this tool:

Mathim was also discussed here:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=193510
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=196699

It is possible to copy the text of session (simply by selecting it) and put it into a TeX file.

Answer 2

LaTeX plugin in Pidgin:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin-latex/

This screenshot is taken from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin-latex/screenshots/124729

Answer 3

There are scripts written by Valery Alexeev.

UPDATE: The new name for this plugin is TeX for Gmail. Now there is only one plugin which adds TeX-rendering to both Gmail and Gmail Chat. (IIRC, they used to be separate.)

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Here is original version of this post:

They were mentioned in this answer: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/7809/online-physics-collaboration-tools/7811#7811

GmailTeX was mentioned in leo's comment. There is also GmailChatTeX.

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This Firefox add-on http://thewe.net/tex/ seems to be similar.

Answer 4

Deprecated: There are easier ways to render $\LaTeX$ in chat, such as the start ChatJax bookmarklet, which uses MathJax to render.

In the Mathematics chat, we often use the codecogs.com $\LaTeX$ Equation Editor: http://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?\sum_{k=1}^\infty\frac{1}{k^2}=\frac{\pi^2}{6} yields

You have to replace spaces with %20 since spaces are not allowed in URLs (actually, it is probably best to escape all reserved characters in URLs, but other than spaces, most characters seem to be passed through by a number of common browsers).

Answer 5

EDIT: This project seems to be abandoned. (At least the website does not work anymore.) If anyone has the knowledge that it has been moved to another location, please, edit this post with updated information.

TeXChat is a chat which uses Mathjax for rendering math.

I've learned about it from the website MathJax in Use.

Here's a screenshot:

You can copy a source of an individual message by hovering above it and selecting the text.