From brian@bert.chem.wsu.edu Wed Jul 23 13:12:59 1997 Received: from cheetah.it.wsu.edu for brian@bert.chem.wsu.edu by www.ccl.net (8.8.3/950822.1) id MAA20196; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 12:59:05 -0400 (EDT) Received: from bert.chem.wsu.edu (bert.chem.wsu.edu [134.121.43.22]) by cheetah.it.wsu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA05791 for ; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 09:59:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: by bert.chem.wsu.edu (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA16388; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 09:49:19 -0700 From: brian@bert.chem.wsu.edu (Brian W. Beck) Message-Id: <9707231649.AA16388@bert.chem.wsu.edu> Subject: Software:Equation Editors (Summary) To: CHEMISTRY@www.ccl.net (Computational Chemistry List) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 09:49:19 -0700 (PDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here is the summary of responses I got concerning equation editors for Mac using MS Word. Specifically, I was looking for something for equations as Endnote is for references and the most important feature I was looking for was global search and replace (i.e. replace all V(x) with U(t) through a whole document. Hope this helps, -Brian --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Expressionist (from Waterloo MapleSoft ) shenkin@still3.chem.columbia.edu (Peter Shenkin) Hi. I've used Expressionist for many years, and it's very good. It's lots better than the equation formatter in MS/Word/5, but I've not tried the one in MS/Word/6. Pieter Stouten I have used (don't have much need for an equation editor at the moment) Expressionist extensively. It is not as seamlessly integrated with MSWord as EndNote (which I heavily use), but it is almost there. One can double-click Expressionist equations and that opens Expressionist. Closing the equation window pastes the updated equation back into Word. Expressionist is very easy to use and gives me enough control to produce equations that are good enough for me. Your mileage may vary, but I'd suggest you give Expressionist a try. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Word Formula Entry Kieran F Lim (Lim Pak Kwan)" before Microsoft signed the deal with MathType to have an object based eqn. editor, Word (version 4) had a formula-entry capability eg something like CMD-OPTION-\ then FRAC to get a fraction .\frac(top,bottom) automatically set up in the old FORMALA GLOSSARY which came FREE with the Word program back in the good ol' days! R.G.Gilbert and S.C.Smith used this formula-entry capability to write EVERY equation in their book "Theory of Unimolecular Reactions ..." so it is a very powerful tool. have a look in your library to see what the final product looks like. (free plug for my friends here) this capability still exists in word 5 and 6, but is now omitted from the manual. and you don't get the FORMALA GLOSSARY any more. I use a mixture of Word's formula entry and a program called Expressionist which is another object based eqn. editor BUT it does the capability to convert all its objects INTO WORD MARKUP FORMULA ENTRIES. Expressionist is made by Prescience fax 1-(415) 882-0530] try Prescience.com as an e-mail or WWW site I do NOT know of any program which has the ability to back-convert word formula entries into an object based eqn for easy editting. personally, I prefer Expressionist, but I recommend you should get either the FULL version of MathType, not the toy version in Word or the Expressionist program or beg, borrow or steal a manual for Word 4 which sets out Word's formula entry capability. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Mathtype (which appears to be the progenitor of the Eqn Ed.) Krzysztof Radacki Try MathType by Design Sicience Inc (http://www.mathtype.com/mathtype/). Guido Germano You can try "MathType", which is an enhanced version of "Equation Editor", but which hasn't all the features you want, or resort to "Scientific Word", a program which looks like a conventional WYSIWIG word processor, but saves the documents in LaTeX format; however, I don't know whether there exist a port for the Mac (I saw it only for Windows so far). Or convert yourself altogether to LaTeX, using for instance "TeXtures", which compiles your document while you write the source. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) TeX Editor for Macs Juan Carlos Paniagua I don't know such an equation editor for MSWord, but the TeX editor Scientific Word is, in principle, a good alternative: it has the tools for editing text and formulas in the same window (with e pseudo-wysiwyg look), distinguishes between both types of information, and imports documents produced with other editors via the MS-RTF format. The problem is that some important features, like the translation from RTF, don't work well due to bugs of the software, and the support service of the company that produces it (TCI) is inoperative. You can have a look at http://www.thomson.com/tcisoft/products/mac25.html or http://www.matstat.unit.no/~yngvesv/swp/swp.html victoria@acdlabs.com (Victoria Barclay) There *is* a version of TeX for the Mac; it's called OzTeX. It's shareware (I think) developed by an Australian fellow. clifford@lorentzian.com (Simon Clifford) After I used Word 5's equation editor to type the equations in my thesis I swore never again. Now by choice I use LaTeX. Since you already have experience with this it might be worth using LaTeX on the Mac? There is at least one very good shareware port, called OzTeX, which should be available on any info-mac mirror. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Since it seemed like a number of people were suggesting Expressionist, I sent a query to customer support. ptarr@maplesoft.com (Patti Tarr) Thanks for your interest in Maple software. Any questions you may have can be directed to me at ptarr@maplesoft.com or by calling 1-800-267-6583 ext. 227. There are no compatiblity issues using Expressionist 3.2 with Word 5.1a for Mac. You should have no problems running Expressionist in this environment. me> me> Can I do global search and replace with me> Expressionist? For example, if I have me> a paper full of equations and I me> want to change all the V(r) to U(r) me> through the whole document, can I do me> this? A global search and replace won't work. When you paste an expression into Word, it is considered a graphic rather than text so is not included when Word searches through the document. Unfortunately, there isn't really a way around this. The only alternative to manually make each change. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance. Sincerely, Patti Tarr Waterloo Maple Inc. 1-800-267-6583 ext. 227 ptarr@maplesoft.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, I asked them if it were possible to keep a "library" of equations which could be "Publish/Subscribed" into a word document such that the word document would automatically update if you changed the Expressionist "library". They indicated that this was partially possible in that you could make a library of equations, but that each time you put an equation into Word, it became an independent entity and double-clicking would bring up a new Expressionist document not the original "library". -- ============================================================================= | .---------.| Brian W. 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