Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

re: Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

davidacoder — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 12:31:09 GMT

Hi Murray,

this comment is really not related to this post, I still would be interested in your opinion.

A lot of (i.e. almost all) scientific journals do not accept docx files for submission. This is sort of expected, given how new it is. But they don't even accept files that are saved into the old Word 2003 format that contain equations that are created with the new equation editor of Word 2007. See Science magazine as just one example of many:

http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/contribinfo/prep/docx.dtl

This essentially means that the new equation editor can't be used for scientific work at this time... Are you trying to mitigate this problem in any way? If I understood the discussion correctly, there is code in Word 2007 that can export equations to MathML. Maybe you could release an add-in that would for example take a docx as input and then output MathML representations for all equations in the document so that magazines could use those for their further workflow? Are you trying to engage with scientific magazines to help them with this problem?

I have to say I am a bit surprised that this shows up now. I would have assumed that you got in touch with science magazines before doing the new equation editor and would have had some solution to this problem...

re: Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

David Carlisle — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:42:36 GMT

> Maybe you could release an add-in that would for example take a docx as input and then output MathML representations

I think that the tools to make that are all available, if you peek into the xml output from Word you should be able to pull out all the ooxml math with a simple xpath query, then to convert it to mathml, MS have an xsl stylesheet which may be in the office distribution (but I didn't see it in the beta I had), but is available linked from here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/08/16/700494.aspx

David

re: Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

davidacoder — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 15:48:50 GMT

Maybe then work with this publishers and point this option out? It just seems a shame that finally Word got a decent equation editor and then it can't be used for many scientific publications...

re: Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

sherlock — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:07:40 GMT

Hi Murray,

Is Alt+= supposed to enter a math zone? I've built an app with a Richedit 6.0 control and Alt+= doesn't appear to be working when I then try to type something in linear format.

re: Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

David Carlisle — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 05:02:18 GMT

Ive but some further comments (and code) related to the comment above about getting XHTML+MathML from Word here:

http://dpcarlisle.blogspot.com/2007/04/xhtml-and-mathml-from-office-20007.html

re: Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

MurrayS — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:19:28 GMT

Sorry to take so long to reply. I'm working hard on the next version :-)

First Alt+= isn't enabled in Office 2007 versions of RichEdit. The testers hadn't tested it enough to release it. The hot key will work in later versions as it does in Word 2007. You can ship messages to RichEdit to turn math zones on and off. For example, EM_SETCHARFORMAT can turn on a math zone if the wparam has SCF_ONLYCFEFFECTS set (0x0200) and the CHARFORMAT2::dwEffects has CFE_MATH (0x10000000) set and the CHARFORMAT2::dwMask has CFM_MATH (0x10000000) set.

Re talking with publishers, Word 2007's math and the underlying math components are a tour de force. We were lucky to be able to ship them at all. Even though Word 2007's math isn't yet as interoperable as one would like, it is all openly documented. As David Carlisle points out and has proved in his post (see my blog on web math (http://blogs.msdn.com/murrays/archive/2007/04/15/creating-math-web-documents-using-word-2007.aspx), one can get the math from Word 2007 in a standard form. You can also readily make pdf's from Office 2007 applications like Word 2007. I'm currently working on improving LaTeX interoperability. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day :-)

re: Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

davidacoder — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 10:57:33 GMT

But why not just include a MathML representation of equations in docx files? Just as an additional representation, not the one used for loading etc. It seems that almost everything required to do so is present already in any case (i.e. the transform from OMML to MathML).

The upside would be huge: Publishers could use their existing and working tools and would not have to completly rework their publishing process. Pointing out that OMML is open and documented is nice, but does not help to solve the problem that Word 2007 cannot be used for scientific publications at this point. It would also be nice if MS could acknowledge that publishers are not starting from scratch with respect to equatinos. If you compare the cost for you to include MathML export with the cost of every publisher to change their publishing process to include OMML support, one just would hope that you simply include MathML export by default in docx.

This would really be similiar to the way OLE objecst are stored. There you have the binary representation that is used to edit it, but there is always also a simple bitmapt stored in the file, so that a program that cannot handle the binary BLOB can still render the thing. Why not do exactly the same with MathML?

re: Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

thanhdvqn — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 03:36:47 GMT

I want programer by VFP for writing code: convert string character to object image or picture in ms word.

Please help me

Thank you

Math Selection

Murray Sargent: Math in Office — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:22:52 GMT

Selection of text in a math zone obeys some special rules concerning built-up math objects, such as fractions

Math Selection

Noticias externas — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:47:41 GMT

Selection of text in a math zone obeys some special rules concerning built-up math objects, such as fractions

re: Math Find/Replace and Rich Text Searches

Tim Lauck — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:01:19 GMT

We really need the export to xhtml+mathml feature from

Word 2007 with universal browser support.

There are new accessibility initiatives that require it. Why not just

get it done so we can use all the great new features of the equation editor and Microsoft Math. As it is I'm using TeX+tex4ht but I really

like some of the new features, just can't use them yet because of

this constraint.

Best

Tim Lauck