Murray Sargent: Math in Office

I'm a software development engineer in Microsoft Office and have been working mostly on the RichEdit editor since 1994. In this blog I focus on mathematics in Office along with some posts on RichEdit and the early Windows days

Users of OfficeMath note that entering math symbols using a keyboard can be hard because they don't...

Date: 06/14/2019

The post Using MathML-Based Speech to Edit Math in Different Math Models discusses the need to...

Date: 04/30/2019

This post discusses how an Assistive Technology program (AT) can use Presentation MathML to create...

Date: 03/28/2019

The post UTF-8 RTF shows how much easier it is to read the rich text format (RTF) with Unicode...

Date: 02/27/2019

Six years have past since the post RichEdit 8 Feature Additions and a lot has happened in between....

Date: 01/18/2019

RichEdit has many character-format properties, most of which are documented for ITextFont2 and...

Date: 12/22/2018

Microsoft products expose their contents for accessibility purposes via a set of interfaces known as...

Date: 11/16/2018

The post OfficeMath describes the history, model, file format, typography and math font of the...

Date: 10/17/2018

Microsoft Word 2007 and RichEdit 6.0 introduced the native Office math facility. PowerPoint, Excel,...

Date: 09/30/2018

As discussed in the post Editing equations created using the Microsoft Equation Editor, the...

Date: 08/31/2018

The Microsoft OfficeMath object model (OMML) dedicates explicit arguments for integrands, summands...

Date: 07/31/2018

This post compares the Design Science Equation Editor and MathType features with the Microsoft...

Date: 05/14/2018

OneNote Universal has a nifty built-in math facility that lets you solve and graph equations. Enter...

Date: 04/29/2018

The post Math Accents discusses how accent usage in math zones differs from that in ordinary text,...

Date: 03/31/2018

The post RichEdit 8.0 Image Support describes how RichEdit supports popular image formats, such as...

Date: 02/21/2018

Word’s first math editing facility was the EQ field. Some description of the EQ field and comparison...

Date: 01/23/2018

This post describes three ways RichEdit may clip text along with possible solutions. Clipping can...

Date: 12/28/2017

Many posts of this blog are about the native Office math facility introduced in Microsoft Word in...

Date: 11/30/2017

Greek letters often appear as variables in mathematical text. This post describes their support in...

Date: 10/31/2017

This post augments the post Inserting and Getting Math Text in RichEdit by documenting the RichEdit...

Date: 09/28/2017

In offering a LaTeX math input mode, we’ve run into the problem that a user might type some LaTeX...

Date: 08/31/2017

For a while now it’s been possible to switch Word’s math input mode from UnicodeMath to LaTeX. We...

Date: 07/30/2017

For sighted users, Microsoft Office applications like Word, PowerPoint and OneNote have user...

Date: 06/21/2017

Mathematical text in modern technical documents appears in math zones. This is true for LaTeX,...

Date: 04/18/2017

The posts Microsoft Office Math Speech and Speaking of math… describe two kinds of math-speech...

Date: 03/19/2017

Microsoft Office math-aware applications can now speak math in over 18 different languages! Try it...

Date: 02/27/2017

In addition to handling 2D arrangements such as fractions, root, subscripts and superscripts, math...

Date: 01/31/2017

People often ask questions about the nature of the text insertion point (IP), the blinking vertical...

Date: 12/28/2016

A new version of Unicode Technical Note #28, UnicodeMath, a Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of...

Date: 11/30/2016

You might think that there’s just one good way to speak a math expression, at least in each natural...

Date: 10/30/2016

In writing the post Nemeth Braille—the first math linear format, I became increasingly aware that...

Date: 09/07/2016

Both Unicode and Nemeth braille include sets of math alphanumerics. Section 2.2 of Unicode Technical...

Date: 08/26/2016

The 6-dot Nemeth braille encoding was created by Abraham Nemeth for mathematical and scientific...

Date: 07/31/2016

This post discusses how a combination of the Office in-memory built-up format (“Professional” in...

Date: 06/30/2016

A text editor has to provide ways of reading and modifying text. For external clients, the RichEdit...

Date: 05/31/2016

As discussed in the post RichEdit Font Binding, in a text string when a character appears that isn’t...

Date: 03/28/2016

This post describes some seemingly anomalous behavior that can happen when you type characters that...

Date: 01/04/2016

The post RichEdit Font Binding outlines how RichEdit chooses fonts when you paste or otherwise enter...

Date: 12/07/2015

Starting with the Office 2007 RichEdit, it has been possible to enter math using the keyboard and to...

Date: 11/22/2015

For years, many applications have used the locale ID (LCID) to identify the language and locale for...

Date: 10/19/2015

The popularity of emoji symbols has encouraged a variety of technological innovations, notably fonts...

Date: 09/24/2015

In applications that have lots of independent text instances such as spreadsheets and complex...

Date: 08/30/2015

With on-screen keyboards used commonly on phones, tablets and even on laptops, one might wonder how...

Date: 07/06/2015

Typical documents use black for the text color and white for the background. This gives the highest...

Date: 06/08/2015

Word 2016 and PowerPoint 2016 join OneNote 2010 (and later) in offering a way to display equation...

Date: 05/14/2015

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