As much as I'd like to push a Firefox agenda, I went looking for a bitmap solution, since that would ensure everyone sees the same thing with wide compatability. I found
LatexRender which I have put up for testing at
http://www.bentest.dreamhosters.com/bb. Forum password is
polywell.
Note, that is not my normal webhost and the trial account may expire on the 18th April. I tracked down talk-polywell.org to be hosted with dreamhost.com, and their plan was fairly attractive (see following post) so I thought I would try it out. Testing on their system should make it easier to then implement on talk-polywell.org, so I signed on for a two-week trial, set up phpBB and installed LatexRender. Fairly straightforward.
You might want to try a free trial yourself.
For anyone wanting to use LatexRender with pbpBB on DreamHost, here is what I did: (with the bold bits needing to be customised for your account)
-----------------
[1] From the DreamHost Panel, Enabled Shell Access. Used Putty application for MSWindows to SSH into the dreamhost server.
Alternatively you could unpack/edit files locally and FTP them.
[2]$ mkdir tmpinstall ; cd tmpinstall
[3]$ wget
http://www.mayer.dial.pipex.com/latexrender.zip
[4]$ unzip latexrender.zip
[5]$ cp -r ~/tmpinstall/phpBB/latexrender ~/
bentest.dreamhosters.com/bb/latexrender
[6]$ cd ~/
bentest.dreamhosters.com/bb
[7]$ vi latexrender/phpbb_hook_2.php
Edited according to README_phpBB3.txt (although talk-polywell.org may require README_phpBB2.txt instead)
Used...
< $latexrender_path = "
/home/coman/bentest.dreamhosters.com/bb/latexrender";
< $latexrender_path_http = "/bb/latexrender";
[8]vi latexrender/class.latexrender.php
Used...
< var $_image_format = "png"; //change to png if you prefer
(since gifs were pixelated)
[9]$ vi includes/bbcode.php
Edited according to README_phpBB3.txt
[10] In the phpBB Admin Control Panel, added a new bbcode tag.
As described in README_phpBB3.txt
Thats it for phpBB3. (although there is a bit more to do for phpBB2 that talk-polywell.org runs on)
Hope that helps.