# Can we install Latex packages for making commutative diagrams?

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In the comment of an answer of this post: When can we take the Brillouin zone to be a sphere? , I tried to make a commutative diagram out of latex codes, but it seems we don't have the packages yet, can we install them?

"amscd" package codes is the one I used in the comment, it is simple but can only generate rectangular diagrams.

"tikz" package is much more powerful, but I haven't learn it.

Can we install both?

Update: Thanks to dimension10's answer, I realize it is a matter of MathJax, and there are versions of MathJax that support amscd, but no version supports tikz, see this post and this post.  It seems our MathJax is below version 2.2 since my codes wouldn't get displayed as diagrams.

The rationale of asking for this is that it makes much less collective efforts to communicate, one user posts a diagrams, another user can just extract the codes and modify it, which is frequently needed in a discussion.

retagged Jun 2, 2014

Since we are using the latest MathJaX version (our MathJaX snippet actually just links to the latest JS for MathJaX, so we will always be using the latest version!), and AMScd can be used, and TikZ is incompatible with MathJaX, I'm marking this as status-featureexists.

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Sorry, I don't think this is possible.

PhysicsOverflow, like Stack Exchange and most other sites, uses MathJaX for mathematical rendering. We cannot install packages, because MathJax isn't actually LaTeX, it's just a script which mimicks LaTeX in HTML webpages.

Maybe a viable option would be to create the drawing offline, export to SVG, and embed the SVG file in the post?

answered Jun 2, 2014 by (1,955 points)

Maybe I've used the wrong terminology, sorry. But clearly SE at least supports displaying diagrams written in "amscd", so I guess it can be done by mathjax somehow?

I did find this post on math SE, it seems mathjax 2.2 beta (and supposedly any newer version) supports displaying "amscd"

and I guess there is not yet any version for mathjax taking care of tikz package, see here

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We are using the latest MathJaX version, and I was wrong that AMScd doesn't work. It does, see here:

http://physicsoverflow.org/5811/sandbox?show=10232#a10232

answered Jun 2, 2014 by (1,955 points)

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