Using MathCast with Word Processors




Using MathCast with Word Processors

A very important feature of MathCast is the ability to use the equations you
create with word processors. There are a few ways you can go about doing this, depending
on which word processor you use.


When working with documents, you would usually want to keep MathCast open as
well, so that you can switch between the word processor and MathCast. When you want
to insert an equation to your document, use MathCast's Copy command from the "Edit
Menu" to copy an equation to the clipboard, and then from the word processor's
"Edit Menu" use paste.


Please note that MathCast's equations are not objects, but pictures. So double-clicking on
them won't open MathCast. It is a good idea then, to keep a backup of your equations in
an equations list file, along with your .doc file. Perhaps in future versions of MathCast
you won't need to do this.


Working with "block style" equations in word processors is not a problem, just paste
the equation and center it on the page. It's also really easy to paste the equations
in tables, when you need.


Thus, this section will point out the problematic issues of working with MathCast and word
processors.




Microsoft Word
There is a small problem inlining equations in a middle of a sentence. If you notice, the
equations that you paste are slightly higher than the rest of the text. For
some reason, Word doesn't have an option to center images in a row of text; you
can move the picture around, but you can't align it to the center.


HTML however does support this option. So if you're creating HTML pages with Word,
you can later make appropriate changes in the HTML itself. See
Using MathCast with HTML.


What you can do to lower the equation in Word, is to lower the text around it. You do it
like this: select the equation image along with the spaces around it, right
click on the selected area, choose "font" from the popup menu, choose the tab
called "spaces between characters" (or something similar), in this dialog
window you can lower the text by pressing the down arrow in the same row called
"location".


MathCast's Enhanced Metafile copy was designed to give higher pixel quality for the equations.
This is especially important when creating documents, since you want the print quality to be
very high. From the Settings Screen, you can select the one of two Enhanced Metafile copy types.
The first one works correctly with Word 2000 and the second one with Word XP and Word 2003.





OpenOffice.org Writer
With OpenOfice.org, you can align an image to the center of a row of text, here is
how: after you paste the equation image, click on in to select it, right click
on the image and select "Anchor->As Character", then right click on the
image again and select "Alignment->Base Line Centered".


When you use MathCast's Enhance Metafile copy, you might not be able to see the equation in
Writer since it's too sharp. Just zoom in a bit to see it. The Enhanced
Metafile copy was tested with OpenOffice.org 1.1.5, and it works correctly.

OpenOffice.org's built-in Math editor supports MathML 1.0, but since MathCast uses MathML
2.0, you cannot import MathCast created equations into OpenOffice.org's Math.