Meridian Arc -- An EZMath Experiment

To view this page, you need the EZMath plugin, a 107 Kb .dll file which will work with Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari (on Windows), Netscape (version 3.0 and above) or Internet Explorer (versions 4 and 5, but not 6 or above; I also tried using HTML OBJECT instead of EMBED, but could not get that to work in IE 8 either due to a security problem: Windows will not run the software because it cannot verify the publisher.) Just click on the link which will start a download process, or right-click the link and select a Save or Download option (depending on your browser.) Save the npezm32.dll file to your hard disk, then move or copy it to the "plugins" folder for whichever browser you use (see below.)

If you are using the 'Windows Explorer' to manage files or folders, ensure that you are viewing all hidden files. From the Windows Explorer window click on the 'View' pull down menu, highlight and click 'Options...' Once there click on the 'View' tab and click on the 'Show all files' radio button. Click on the 'OK' button. The .dll file should now be visible. (Later versions: Tools, Folder Options, View tab; do not hide any files.)

I use Internet Explorer as well as Firefox, Opera and Safari, and I placed the file in these folders:

\Program Files\Internet Explorer\plugins (but it does not work anymore in IE) and
\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins
\Program Files\Opera\program\plugins
\Program Files\Safari\Plugins

The old Netscape folders were:
\Program Files\Netscape\Communicator\Program\Plugins and
\Program Files\Netscape\Navigator\Program\plugins

You have to completely exit and then restart your browser; the plugins are only loaded once at startup.

When comparing EZMath to any similar application, remember that EZMath is completely FREE.

EZMath (1998) is "old technology" in some ways. For one thing, as far as I've been able to determine, the authors (primarily Dave Raggett, also Davy Batsalle) did not get around to releasing a version which would print... you can not print from this page the equations which appear below. You can capture the screen to your clipboard, save that as an image (or Paste) for use in Paint or PhotoEditor or some similar program to "crop" the excess and then print the equations. Here is this page with inline gifs (printable).

But EZMath is still very useful in at least two ways. Firstly, I have yet to find a program which makes it easier to input and display very complex mathematical equations and formulae. (The nearest competitor is the old UNIX program "eqn" from which EZMath was designed.) View the source of this page... if you read the alt= statements aloud, you are speaking the correct reading of the mathematical equations! For vision-impaired users with speaking browsers, this is invaluable.

Secondly, the now "standard" language to display mathematica is called MathML (Math Markup Language). EZMath will produce MathML (Note: it produces an old form of Content MathML; I have not worked with it enough to determine how useful it is today [2009]). When I say EZMath this time, I'm refering to the EZMath Editor -- the lastest (and last?) version 1.1 is from late October 1998. This is a zip file which you download, unzip, read the documentation and then play with it. (The npezm32.dll plugin is included in this zip file.) [After creating your equation alt= description using the expression editor so it displays correctly in the EzMath editor, click "Set clipboard format to MathML", click "Copy to Clipboard", and then click "View Clipboard".]

The below is my work from 1976-1977 which was finally approved for submission to the Defense Mapping Agency. My own work starts with the binomial expansion and includes the integration of the mapping integral and that of the even powers of the sine function. The equations show the derivation of the series expansion for the value of the meridian arc from the equator to latitude phi (which was required to compute the Universal Transverse Mercator [UTM] coordinates used on military maps.) Enjoy! ;-)