Hey guys, I have been surfing the internet for a while but could not get a decent way to write an essay in which I can write down mathematical equations efficiently. I have to submit an essay in one of my course and that includes some mathematical equations (actually depends on it). I was thinking of going with markdown and latex and then convert it to PDF but I am unable to find an offline engine to preview so and all. Please help me with this.
Thanks.
Latex is a good option. Seeing that you use words "convert", "engine" and "preview", I'm guessing that's the reason you had problems searching. Since you are a programmer, you might be happy to learn that latex is just a programming language. You compile the .tex code and receive a .ps or .pdf output.
For Linux, the compiler should be in a package "latex" or even "pdftex" (or a similar name depending on your distribution). You can just write the code in any text editor, but I recommend IDE called texstudio. It will help you with the syntax and compile commands.
For Windows, I believe the compiler is called miktex. Again, I recommend you to find an IDE, but I don't know which ones are good. Maybe someone else knows it, if not, you can google and take a random one.
Texmaker is a good option for Windows.
TeXstudio is also another good open-source tool.
Take a look to sharelatex.com
Check out Pandoc. It lets you convert markdown + LaTeX math to a regular LaTeX pdf. It's a fast command-line tool that works offline.