[Issue] "Empty character string" is not really empty

[Horus]

In the "Format" page of Math Help, it's written that:

The standard centralized formulas can be aligned to the left without using the Format - Alignment menu. To do this, place an empty character string, that is, the inverted commas which surround any text "", before the section of formula that you want to align.

But be aware that this is not true.

Try this reduced case:

Code: Select all

X = ...  newline
""X = ... newline
alignl X = ... newline

It is obvious that the second line is shifted a little bit to the right, meaning that the "empty character string" has *some width*, ie non-empty!

So, when we want to align equal signs, like this:

Code: Select all

X = ...  newline
alignl phantom{X} = ... newline

we cannot really use "" in place of alignl.

Therefore, the problem we have is either:
1. The Math Help is misleading and this discrepancy should be written out clearly to users. And it should stop advise users to use this non-empty string for visual matter.
or
2. The "empty character string" should have no width and the *width* that we see here is a bug.

[RoryOF]

Noted in bug report
http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug ... rysort=new

[Horus]

OK, thanks.

I don't know if I understand it correctly. I think the part about the "small space" won't be fixed... No comment

[acknak]

I think the help text must be wrong, or at least misleading. The empty string still counts as a token--a building block--and OOo Math always puts space between tokens. The "nospace" command was added recently to prevent that extra space being added.

That said, you can usually work around it by adding a similar empty token to other lines to preserve the alignment.

My conclusion, having fiddled a bit with OOo Math, is that it's not a professional-level tool and probably never will be. It's hard to know when to stop fussing with it and just accept some glitches and move on.

[aqualung]

Give MathType 6.7 from Design Science a try. It comes in a LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org flavor and there is a free 30-day trial for the full-featured version, after which it changes to a restricted feature set. However, in my opinion even the restricted version is superior to Microsoft's free Mathematics add-in for Word. Entering and editing a formula is intuitive, with a set of toolbars that offer up what you want fairly quickly.

http://www.dessci.com/en/products/matht ... openoffice

[Horus]

I ..... The "nospace" command was added recently to prevent that extra space being added.

Oh I see! Now I understand why such keyword exists!

My conclusion, having fiddled a bit with OOo Math, is that it's not a professional-level tool and probably never will be. It's hard to know when to stop fussing with it and just accept some glitches and move on.

Yeah, that's also my feeling as well. At first, I thought that might be because of Oracle's acquisition of Sun, thus OOo. But I found that Math hadn't been improved much even before, so that's not the reason.

Give MathType 6.7 from Design Science a try. It comes in a LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org flavor and there is a free 30-day trial for the full-featured version, after which it changes to a restricted feature set. However, in my opinion even the restricted version is superior to Microsoft's free Mathematics add-in for Word. Entering and editing a formula is intuitive, with a set of toolbars that offer up what you want fairly quickly.

http://www.dessci.com/en/products/matht ... openoffice

Thanks. I had known this company because I'm already using its Math Player plugin (to display MathML in IE).

Do I read it right in that page? Its MathType is only available for Windows and Mac but not Linux?

Moreover, I would like to know the following (but I don't have two computers at hand right now so I have to ask):
if I make some math objects in an OOWrite file in computer A using MathType (and OOO, of course), and if I copy the file to computer B, do I need to install MathType in computer B in order to see the math objects? Or do I need to export the file to PDF in computer A first and view it in computer B (which means no possibility to correct the file)?

[aqualung]

Only one way to find out...

Attach a file here so that we can test it and report back to you.

[Horus]

After some pain, I managed to have a virtual machine (XP Pro) to try out MathType. When the file is opened in my real computer (Win7) which has NO MathType, the formula is displayed OK.
I would like to hear how it's displayed in Linux & Mac without MathType.

[acknak]

Here's what I get:

test_mathtype_acknak.png (5.04 KiB) Viewed 9888 times

The MathType object is represented by a .wmf graphic metafile. That's reasonable, and allows OOo to show something on systems without MT, but as you can see with this example, there's no guarantee that MT's output is going to convert smoothly to the metafile form. The problem here, as far as I can tell, is that MT has used some non-standard characters, or character encoding, giving the question mark glyphs (encoding error) and the missing glyph (open box).

[Horus]

Oh......

Thanks for doing the test. Really appreciate it.

[RGB]

Same here: I even tried installing MathType fonts and nothing changed. I think there is no hope on reading MathType on Linux.

[Horus]

Thanks to you too for doing the test. Much appreciated.