[OS X TeX] Commercial equation editor
Maarten Sneep
maarten.sneep at xs4all.nl
Wed Jul 27 22:06:08 CEST 2005
On 27 Jul 2005, at 9:48, Bruno Voisin wrote:
> About equation editors: Wendy McKay from TUG noticed the existence
> of the commercial MathMagic <http://www.mathmagic.com/product/
> product.html>, which exists as a personal edition and several pro
> editions. It's fully WYSIWYG, and doesn't seem to be TeX-based.
I think if you search hard enough on this list, and go back several
years, you'll find some messages from the developer, trying to sell
us on their software. I delivered some comments, and apparently they
appreciated those comments, and gave me a license. The user interface
is very similar to the Word equation editor: IMHO it isn't really
pleasant (naughty words removed).
At the time they just added some TeX export, but I have no clue how
that could ever get past QA: the tex code just will never compile,
due to issues with fonts, and plain coding errors. I haven't tried
the MathML export followed by an XSLT translation, and frankly I have
no use for such an editor, so I don't really feel inclined to try it
out.
I didn't think the output is particularly spectacular, the same
typographic glitches that are produced by MathType are present here
as well. It feels like a MathType clone.
[snip]
> The equations can be pasted in applications like Keynote
> apparently, and double-clicking the pasted equation brings back to
> the editor for modification. More details in <http://
> www.mathmagic.com/download/Documentations/MM5.0UserGuide.pdf>.
It would be interesting to figure out how they do that. It should be
visible in the xml document produced by Keynote.
> That said, the pricing seems prohibitive IMO for an equation editor
> -- compared with what we get for free with TeX-based editors (for
> example, $30 academic with 6-month subscription for the personal
> edition, *and* $200 academic with 6-month subscription for the pro
> InDesign edition).
The pricing is not the prohibitive part IMHO, it is the time limited
license: you cannot open your own documents without a valid license.
Imagine you cannot open a document from one years ago, because you
choose not to renew the license. That is even worse than MS Word!
Maarten
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