Equations in Express

Have a problem? A question? This is the place for answers from other Express users.
bpourciau
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Equations in Express

Post by bpourciau »

One of the features of Nisus classic that made my life easier was the seamless way it worked the equation editor MathType. Does any one know how soon Express might have the same functionality, perhaps with MathMagic? For example, I talking about the ability to double-click an equation and have MathMagic open up with the equation ready for editing. Although I have been a Nisus classic user since Nisus first appeared, this is my first time posting a topic, so forgive me if the topic of equations has been discussed before. --Bruce P
rmark
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Equations in Express

Post by rmark »

Bruce,

Welcome to the Forum!

We are negotiating with a couple of developers for a new equation editor at this time. In the meantime you can use MathMagic to create a PICT that contains an image of the equation. In our next release of Nisus Writer Express we expect that you will also be able to double click on the equation PICT in Nisus Writer Express and then edit it in MathMagic. The same should be true of MathType equations. Currently, Nisus Writer Express turns every graphic it gets into a bitmap, which yields poor quality images in some cases. We know that we need to add vector graphic support. We hope to include that as well in the next version, if possible.
Write On!
Mark Hurvitz
Nisus Software Inc.
rmark
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Equations in Express (more)

Post by rmark »

Bruce,

An addendum:

In MathMagic, when you press copy or you drag an equation out of MathMagic and into Nisus Writer Express, MathMagic provides a very nice high resolution TIFF. We preserve this TIFF because it looks good and it contains the necessary info to allow you to drag it back into MathMagic and re-edit the equation.


We still hope to do more in the future.
Write On!
Mark Hurvitz
Nisus Software Inc.
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Re: Equations in Express

Post by MacSailor »

rmark wrote:We are negotiating with a couple of developers for a new equation editor at this time. In the meantime you can use MathMagic to create a PICT that contains an image of the equation. In our next release of Nisus Writer Express we expect that you will also be able to double click on the equation PICT in Nisus Writer Express and then edit it in MathMagic. The same should be true of MathType equations. Currently, Nisus Writer Express turns every graphic it gets into a bitmap, which yields poor quality images in some cases. We know that we need to add vector graphic support. We hope to include that as well in the next version, if possible.
Hi Mark,

How far did you go in the negotiations with the developers? Will there be a new equation editor in NWE 2.0 or will the support for the existing ones on the market, be improved in the new version of nWE (2.0)?
Peter Edwardsson
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rmark
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re: Equations in Express

Post by rmark »

Peter and Bruce,

Allow me to reiterate:

Dragging equations between applications now works.

Double-clicking to open equations in those applications will come later... even without "negotiations with the developers".

I apologize for the confusion.
Write On!
Mark Hurvitz
Nisus Software Inc.
fm
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Re: Equations in Express (more)

Post by fm »

rmark wrote:In MathMagic, when you press copy or you drag an equation out of MathMagic and into Nisus Writer Express, MathMagic provides a very nice high resolution TIFF. We preserve this TIFF because it looks good and it contains the necessary info to allow you to drag it back into MathMagic and re-edit the equation.
This doesn't work in NWE 2 and MathMagic 4.3.1. Pasting into AppleWorks works as expected.
Bioinformatics
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Joined: 2004-08-15 16:31:36

Another option

Post by Bioinformatics »

Another option if you know a little LaTeX (!), is LaTeX Equation Editor, a small but very nicely drafted application which just makes equations, nothing else.

It'll generate either PDF or TIFF.

Trouble is, its a bit redundant until NWE gets proper graphics support.
iNic
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Joined: 2004-10-11 14:24:45

another option still

Post by iNic »

let mathmagic save your equations as eps files. then drag them where you want them in your nisus document.

this produces perfectly smooth equations in the document as well as in the pdf-document (if you save as pdf).

iNic
iNic
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addendum

Post by iNic »

to get the method above to work you have to drag in all equations in your open document without saving before saving as pdf (you have to turn aoto-save off if you use that), as saving (as rtf for example) destroys the vector graphics data.
dkaplan137
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Low-resolution equations

Post by dkaplan137 »

I just spent a couple of hours editing equations in AppleWorks Equation Editor 3.8 and pasting them into a document in Nisus Writer Express 2.1.1. I'm disappointed to see that they print with such low resolution as to be useless. However, if I drag the same equations from the Nisus Writer Express document into an AppleWorks document or a Word document, they have high resolution. So clearly, my workaround is to abandon Nisus Writer Express for now and get the job done in AppleWorks or Word. But in view of the comment above that high resolution equations should be supported in by now in Express, why didn't this work? Is there a way to make it work?
MacSailor
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Re: Low-resolution equations

Post by MacSailor »

dkaplan137 wrote: I'm disappointed to see that they print with such low resolution as to be useless. However, if I drag the same equations from the Nisus Writer Express document into an AppleWorks document or a Word document, they have high resolution.
I’m having the same problem with charts from Excel pasted into NWE. The same charts are printed in high resolution in both Word and Mellel, but not in NWE.

I know that they are working on a solution, but I do not know if they have found the culprit yet. Hopefully the will come out with a fix asap.
Peter Edwardsson
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MikeKazlow
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Post by MikeKazlow »

When using Mathtype 5.1 eps files, you can import an eps, adjust its baseline manually, save the file as an rtfd format, then print to
Acrobat Distiller and the quality of the image is perfect. However, if you save to rtf, only a bitmap image is saved. It is unfortunate that this does not work with drag and drop or copy and pasted mathtype objects.

Since Nisus was able to support these feature the full set of Mathtype equation functionality in the previous products, they should be able to do so in the present version.

It would also be nice if NWE would support referenced graphics rather than imported graphics. This way if the original image is changed, the document would automatically be updated.
MacSailor
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Post by MacSailor »

Thanks for the advice MikeKazlow. I saved a document containing an eps graphic in the rtfd format and it preserved the high quality even after I closed and reopened the document. Even the printed graphic was sharp as ever. It certainly made my day. :D
Peter Edwardsson
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MikeKazlow
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Post by MikeKazlow »

While NWE can store files in many formats, we are not told what features are preserved in any of the formats. We are only told that rtf is the preferred format without reason.

For cross-platform purposes, rtf has obvious advantages. I would like a complete list of what is stored for each format. My bet is that most of these supported formats are really exports and we cannot expect to re-import.open and get the identical document back. Obviously, we are not getting that with rtf.
delackner
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progress report, rtf vs rtfd

Post by delackner »

First, I apologize for not fixing the printing problem by now. No excuses, other than having a long list of todos! When it is fixed, the release notes will definitely mention it.

As for preserving your image data exactly as it was pasted when saving as RTF, we can't really guarantee this except when you re-open the file in NWE, since many modern image formats are just not allowed in RTF. We have our own hints in the RTF file to preserve the original data for re-opening in NWE, so if it isn't working with some image format, my fault, it is a bug. I will look into that.

RTFD can preserve everything because it is a mac-only format that just saves the original file in the document package. If you are doing serious workflow with large large images and everyone on board can use RTFD, you want to use RTFD even ignoring the image preservation issue, because loading and saving RTFD files is considerably faster than RTF.

If you can think of a really concise way to express all that info in the Save-As dialog, I'm listening!
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