catalina and Nisus Pro

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rsutc
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catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by rsutc »

I make up a lot of Math tests. These have sections with varying numbers of columns and lots of equations. OK I know that in Catalina the various equation writers do not work. But the files I created in Mojave do not even display correctly when I call them up in Catalina.. The sections are garbled and some information is apparently off screen. Is this a fixable bug, or...
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martin
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by martin »

It sounds like your equations are very likely to be images using the old PICT data format. That's a legacy image format that has fallen into disrepair as new macOS versions have been released. Please see our FAQ entry about PICT images, but the short answer is that you should replace your images with a modern format as soon as possible. For example, you can use MathType to insert PDF equation images. I'm sorry for the bad news, but good luck!
rsutc
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by rsutc »

martin wrote: 2020-01-27 12:45:34 It sounds like your equations are very likely to be images using the old PICT data format. That's a legacy image format that has fallen into disrepair as new macOS versions have been released. Please see our FAQ entry about PICT images, but the short answer is that you should replace your images with a modern format as soon as possible. For example, you can use MathType to insert PDF equation images. I'm sorry for the bad news, but good luck!
Ah, no. The PICT ones went by the wayside some time ago and were replaced by brand new ones done with MathType. They show up fine in Mojave and are present in the file when I open it in Catalina as well. (Now of course they cannot in fact be edited in Catalina, because MathType is not yet 64 bit, but that is not why I posted here.) The problem is that the sections in documents that have sections are all garbled and their contents show off to the left (out of the display range of the document. The same files open correctly with everything in the right place under Mojave. Sections with equations are messed up a bit more than ones without, but in some sections NONE of the text is shown in Catalina even though it is in Mojave. Sections with no equations seem in some cases to display correctly, but I rarely produce documents with sections that have no equations.

Fix for equations: a. edit on my old 2015 MacBook Pro under Mojave. or b. Switch to Tex. I can handle either.
Fix for display problem in Catalina?? Not opening file correctly?? (converter issue??) or you need to fix a bug in the rendering of the file to the window?? or??
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martin
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by martin »

Can you please send us an example file? I'd like to see exactly what is wrong. You can post a file here if you don't mind it being public, or you can send us one privately via the menu Help > Send Feedback. Thanks!
rsutc
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by rsutc »

Be glad to. Here is a midterm from a couple of years ago. I have it open right now on a MacPro running Mojave where it displays perfectly with all sections properly set up and all equations crisp and clear. Simultaneously I have it open on Catalina where only the section headings display and all the content, both test and equations does not appear.
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Math124M2Spring2017.rtf
(289.63 KiB) Downloaded 549 times
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martin
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by martin »

Thanks for sharing a sample document. It confirms the problem is exactly as expected: your document is using old Mac PICT images. Please see our FAQ on PICT images on how you can identify that you are using PICT images. You'll need to replace your PICT image equations with a modern data format, like PDF.
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martin
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by martin »

Here's another tip that can help you identify which images are using the old PICT format:

1. Open your document.
2. Use the menu File > Image Analysis
3. In the dialog that appears, click the arrow icon under the Document column:

analysis.png
analysis.png (96.45 KiB) Viewed 14442 times

You'll see a list of all images in your document. You can identify PICT images by their .pict file extension:

list.png
list.png (56.62 KiB) Viewed 14442 times

You can click entries in the list to see them selected in your document.
rsutc
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by rsutc »

OK thanks, I guess. I was sure that in exams that recent I had already changed everything to PDF format. Perhaps the default format in MathType is PICT. Unfortunately none of the commercial equation editors are 64 bit, and none of the Tex editors appear capable of reading this images either, so I need to keep at leas one machine on Mojave indefinitely. How be Nisus does an equation editor. You could corner the market given the sloppy way its being handled now.
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by credneb »

I really don't know if this would be a work-around, but if they are static, could you not take a screen shot (png) of the equations in MathType (or on your Mojave machine) and use the screen shots?
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by xiamenese »

Otherwise I’m sure you could use Graphic Converter to batch convert all your picts to jpeg or png.

Mark
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martin
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by martin »

Here's a Nisus Writer Pro macro that scans your documents for PICT images and converts them all to a modern image format, eg: JPEG. However, this is a quick fix which will almost certainly result in a loss of image quality. PICT is a vector image format. To convert these old images the macro rasterizes them. They won't look good in printouts or other high DPI contexts. Converting these images will also destroy any encoded equation metadata. MathType and other editors won't be able to edit these converted equation images.

Ideally you should replace your equations with proper PDF images, which are vectorized, modern, and well-supported by Nisus Writer and macOS. Current versions of MathType (and other tools) can produce PDF equations.
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Hamid
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Re: catalina and Nisus Pro

Post by Hamid »

It is interesting to note that when I export your Nisus file as Word binary, and then open the converted file in Nisus, the PICT images were converted to PNG. It seems that the LibreOffice exporter used in Nisus handles the conversion of PICT images to PNG.
Of the 36 images of the original file, the converted file has 34 PNG images. The PDF image and one other image was missed in the output.
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