Microsoft Equation Editor

Infobox Software
name = Microsoft Office Equation Editor


caption = Equation Editor under Microsoft Office 2007. The linear input "a=(b/c)^x+..." would produce this output.
developer = Microsoft
latest_release_version = 2007
operating_system = Microsoft Windows
license = Proprietary EULA

Equation Editor is a formula editor developed by Design Science that allows users to construct math and science equations in a WYSIWYG environment. Equation Editor was developed by Design Science and is included in all Microsoft Office versions and several other commercial applications. It is a simplified version of Design Science MathType. It can be used as a standalone program or it can also be used from within applications that support OLE as an embedded object. Its feature set has not changed significantly since its introduction in Word for Windows, version 2.0.

For Microsoft Office 2007, Equation Editor is included as is, however some Office 2007 applications also include a reengineered equation editor with support for a TeX-like linear input/edit language called "Office Math Markup Language" (Office MathML or OMML) in addition to its WYSIWYG interface. [ [http://blogs.msdn.com/murrays/archive/2006/09/13/752206.aspx High-quality editing and display of mathematical text in Office 2007] ] The revised equation editor is built into the document-editing part of the interface rather than being operated through a separate dialog and being treated as an OLE object in the document. Unicode Plain Text Encoding of Mathematics is also supported. [ [http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath.pdf Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics: Murray Sargent - Microsoft Corporation] ] "Office Math Markup Language (OMML)" is a mathematical markup language embedded in WordProcessingML, with intrinsic support for including word processing markup like revision markings, footnotes, comments, images and elaborate formatting and styles. Equation number management is also possible using macros.

Format compatibility

The OMML format is different from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) MathML recommendation. Academic publishers have noted that the rendering of equations as graphics in .DOCX files impairs its usability for scholarly publishing as the conversion to and from MathML to OMML while converting between DOC and DOCX is not seamless and automatic. [ [http://www.inera.com/word2007docx.shtml Word 2007 DOCX File Format] ] Especially, when saving DOC files using Word 2007, equations are rendered as graphics as the older DOC format as well as older versions of Office do not support OMML, which prevents editing and flexibly printing the equations. [ [http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Microsoft-Office-dumped-by-Science-and-Nature/0,130061733,339278690,00.htm Microsoft Office dumped by Science and Nature] ] OMML is partially compatible with MathML through relatively simple XSL Transformations. Word 2007 has support for converting equations to/from MathML via the clipboard. [ [http://dpcarlisle.blogspot.com/2007/04/xhtml-and-mathml-from-office-20007.html XHTML and MathML from Office 2007] ] [ [http://www.inera.com/word2007math.shtml Word 2007 Math] ] Copied equations are in (Presentation) MathML format, so they can be pasted into other programs that understand this XML markup, such as Mathematica. Conversely, MathML can also be pasted into a Word document and it will be recognized as an equation and displayed properly (as long as it does not contain MathML symbolic character entities such as &PlusMInus; — use numeric entities instead). The transformations that allow copying/pasting equations via MathML are driven by two XSL stylesheets (omml2mml.xsl and mml2omml.xsl). These scripts can be used outside of Word by reading or manipulating DOCX XML files directly.

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac does not currently support OMML. [ [http://www.microsoft.com/mac/help.mspx?clr=99-1-0&srcid=a6423962-3417-4974-b489-479794e52dcd1033&ep=9&target=bb539409-4be8-48da-a1b3-842cf958fffb1033 Equations saved from Word 2007 for Windows do not appear in Word 2008 for Mac] ]

References

ee also

* MathType
* Typsetting

External links

* [http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathtype/faqs.htm#mt_v_ee MathType and Equation Editor]
* [http://blogs.msdn.com/murrays/ Math in Office blog]
* [http://www.grindeq.com/ GrindEQ] Converts from MathType OLE objects to Equation Editor 3.0 object.
* [http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_office_word/archive/2006/10/04/Equations-in-Word-2007.aspx Equations in Word 2007]
* MathMagic equation editor
* [http://www.dragmath.bham.ac.uk DragMath] an open source Java applet.