How do I paste an Equation from Word into Affinity Publisher 2 (on a Mac)?

[jimrome]

I have a scientific article in Word, and would like to get the equations into my AP2 article. I can copy the equations into the clipboard, but there seems to be no way to insert them from the clipboard into AP2. Dragging does not work, and I can't save the equations to a file to place.

[v_kyr]

Depends on how the equations (their format) are initially embedded into Word. The Affinity apps can only deal here with with images (as bitmaps) or SVG and with some limitations when certain system wide math fonts have been used for the equations. - The easiest to share for equations between Word and Affinity would be as images here.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[jimrome]

Actually, when I copied the Word text including the equations, they copied into AP2! Amazing.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[v_kyr]

Didn't tried that (as I lack to have/use Word) but Aspose claims to offer Word to SVG (probably also PDF) conversions ...

• Convert Word Equations and MathType into SVG
• Convert docx to SVG
• ... etc.

Personally for equations I would use more things like ...

• LaTeX to SVG
• LaTeXIT
• LyX

[jimrome]

You are right. Unlike the others in the document, this one was done with just special characters and super/subscripts.

I am trying to replace FrameMaker, and Affinity would be perfect if it did equations.

Edited April 1, 2023 by jimrome
added comment

[jimrome]

I enlarged Word doc, made a screen shot of just the equation, and placed it into the doc. It comes in tiny and must be enlarged. The main issue is how to get all the equations the same size.

[v_kyr]

50 minutes ago, jimrome said:

I am trying to replace FrameMaker...

Which was (...and maybe still is) one of the best apps for technical  writing (books, thesis, diploma ...etc.) purposes. Used it mainly (beside LaTeX) in the pasts (pre Adobe times) on Unix systems. - Sadly after Adobe took it over, it was only continued to be developed further for WIn and then nowadays also to be Adobe typical cloud-based oriented rental software. - Word is by far no replacement for FrameMaker, neither is APub.

40 minutes ago, jimrome said:

I enlarged Word doc, made a screen shot of just the equation, and placed it into the doc. It comes in tiny and must be enlarged. The main issue is how to get all the equations the same size.

If you can (would) get the equations instead of bitmap screenshots as SVG vectors, then you can scale them as wanted, or alter the SVG internal xml code to be of equal size for all the SVG format equations just by editing the SVG xml code accordingly in some text editor, before reusing (placing, draging over etc.) into APub.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[jimrome]

I agree. I can no longer afford to use a new FrameMaker. I have an ancient version that is barely holding on, so am trying Affinity. Some things are easier in AP2. It is equations that are the big hangup.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, lacerto said:

They did not just take it over, but have continued to develop it strongly ...

I've used FM since the past NeXT times, initially got it as a part payment for a customer programming job since I also had an urgent private usage need for the FM software. AFAI recall it's price in the past was somewhere in between ~$2500-$3000 for NeXTstep, which was a bunch/lot of money those times for a software. Later after my NX times I contacted an Adobe rep I had good contact to, who managed to send me a NX to Win system update kit for it (...as far as I recall, I got a bunch of FM 7 Win floppy disks as an upgrade package).

After Adobe acquired FM of course also a lot of former times Frame Technologies algorithmic programming code know how also flow into Adobe's own InDesign product those days, similar as before with a bunch Altsys/Macromedia Freehand know how which flow into Illustrator, etc. - In case of FM, Adobe on the one side rescued the survival of the product and pushed it again towards pro markets. Of course they benefitted from it, though the support of other system platforms, div Unix'es and OSX, had been dropped then over time. - Nowadays Adobe has with FM and ID two strong pro players in this publishing field, with which everything else must be measured.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[jimrome]

Rasterized equations are not bad if they are of sufficiently high resolution. 

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[jimrome]

I am on Ventura on a Mac Studio.

Has anyone used Math+Magic? http://www.mathmagic.com/

[v_kyr]

49 minutes ago, jimrome said:

I am on Ventura on a Mac Studio.

Has anyone used Math+Magic? http://www.mathmagic.com/

I recall that I once tried that out, though not in the Affinity context and It did what it was meant for. - Though there are also many (a bunch of) similar solutions available commercial & freeware ...

• Equation Maker
• xFormula
• Equatio
• Klatexformula (freeware on GitHub)
• LibreOffice Math - (freeware)
• Apple Pages Equations (usually part of Pages)
• JMathEdit
• LaTeXIT (freeware)
• TeXMaths (freeware)
• Cassiopeia
• ...
• ... and so on ...

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[jimrome]

xFormula in Mac Store works! I just copied and pasted. 

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[jimrome]

It will export in TeX or as an image, which is what copy and paste gave me. It is free too in the Apple Store. You would have to edit it in xFormula.

I had to enlarge it with the Arrow tool. So the question is how do I make sure that the sizes of all these equations are the same?

[v_kyr]

Well, the free Klatexformula and some of the other mentioned tools will export to much more formats, also to several vector formats. - Another thing to mention is, that tools which offer LaTeX like text input methods are much faster and flexible to use that pressing calculator like buttons. The same applies to scientific calculators here, where CLI like text input is also much more flexible than dealing only with buttons, in order to input and deal with calculos and/or equations!

 

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

 

[jimrome]

Lacerto, why is this all obsolete? Is there a better way to do this?

[lacerto]

9 hours ago, jimrome said:

Lacerto, why is this all obsolete? Is there a better way to do this?

I do not recall what I had written, but probably something that had already got obsolete (had to delete everything as my attachment quota was exceeded), but here goes:

1) On Windows, copy and paste as Enhanced Windows Metafile, then edit the cramped characters so that their spacing is normal, and optionally, convert RGB 0,0,0 to K100 or grayscale.

2) On macOS, as you have certainly noticed, Affinity apps mess up the original Word equation (with Cambria Math). So far the best workaround I have found is to install LibreOffice Writer, then copy paste a Microsoft Equation into Writer, pasting it as Rich Text Format, and export the selection to PDF. For some reason it seems that the canvas will be the size of the document (e.g. A4), but this can be cropped with a PDF tool (or simply just clipped within an Affinity app into a rectangle). The contents will be text with LO specific fonts embedded, and can be further exported to PDF retaining the content as text. Or, after having installed the LibreOffice fonts on the system, the LO exported PDF can be opened directly to e.g. Affinity Publisher and edited as wished (e.g., change the color from RGB 0,0,0 to K100).

UPDATE: The most productive method on macOS would probably be subscribing to MathType, as this app should be able to convert all Word (MathLab) equations to MathType and then convert them in one batch to PDFs (I have the old Windows version that does the same but the export format is EPS, which Affinity apps cannot handle).