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I love the fact that this site supports $\LaTeX$, but some things are more easily explained with a free-form drawing. Many people I know have a drawing tablet, and many javascript libraries to allow such input are available freely.

And of course, making a drawing in your favorite MS Paint substitute and uploading it /works/, but I doubt anyone would like to do it that way. Integrating free-form drawing input into this website would allow many mathematicians to express their ideas more freely.

Edit: I would imagine that in the edit box, alongside the "Insert image" button, there would be an "Start sketching" button, which would either open a new window or get some space in the page itself, where with a minimal set of buttons you could make an easy sketch of your thoughts. Nothing fancy, just click to draw, no standard forms like squares or circles, no airbrush tools or layers or filters or effects, just a pen, and maybe colors.

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  • $\begingroup$ Probably a request that should go to the main stackexchange rather than here in math. $\endgroup$
    – GEdgar
    Apr 21, 2012 at 13:21
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    $\begingroup$ @GEdgar: Actually it was established a long time ago that feature requests can come from any meta site. If you consider the needs for this then much like the $\LaTeX$ support which is a unique feature of the math site (and then a few more started using it) this might start as a unique feature as well. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Apr 21, 2012 at 13:55
  • $\begingroup$ I bumped this post since something similar was recently suggested in this answer. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Oct 21, 2014 at 6:39
  • $\begingroup$ There is also a feature request at meta.SE: Drawing/Sketching Tool for elaborating questions. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Oct 21, 2014 at 6:40

1 Answer 1

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Disclaimer: I can't recall ever drawing as part of a question or answer on this site, but I do draw a lot of math (on a "Wacom" tablet) as part of my vocation.

There are many (better) third-party solutions for this, including:

  1. MS Paint (or Mac/Linux equivalent). Export. Upload.
  2. This site, which was the first hit when I googled "draw".

Sure, it would be convenient to have something in the MSE software, but why not let each user choose which features they want (and in doing so, which software they want to use)? Sometimes I save files that users upload in their questions, then edit them on the iPad.

So all told, I would have to give this idea a
thumbs down

(Drawn using the site above, but not with the Wacom!)

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