Equations in Publisher

[jimrome]

Please support MathML equations. It is really difficult to use Publisher for any technical document. I cannot even find out how to put a SVG equation into the middle of text.

[MikeTO]

You can pin any SVG file into text. Use the Pinning panel's Inline option instead of the Float option.

[3289429830]

你可以使用word里面的“插入公式”，然后直接复制粘贴到affinity中，affinity本身不支持直接编辑数学公式

[thebodzio]

On 12/9/2024 at 4:06 PM, jimrome said:

Please support MathML equations. It is really difficult to use Publisher for any technical document. I cannot even find out how to put a SVG equation into the middle of text.

I would love to see it happening. This alone would be a game changer in out-of-the-box-math-capable typesetting apps. That being said, I would be even happier if such functionality could also handle LaTeX-style math—waaaaay more convenient than anything else available so far. Perhaps it could even use the original TeX code if not its re-implementation (license permitting).

[jimrome]

LaTex would be good too.

[PaoloT]

4 hours ago, thebodzio said:

I would be even happier if such functionality could also handle LaTeX-style math

Pandoc can convert MathML to LaTeX, and vice-versa. MathML ish more modern and aimed to future-proof formats, so I would prefer it to be used in Publisher.

Paolo

 

[thebodzio]

5 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

Pandoc can convert MathML to LaTeX, and vice-versa. MathML ish more modern and aimed to future-proof formats, so I would prefer it to be used in Publisher.

Paolo

 

Yes, it is more modern, but, beside being XML at heart is it really better? In comparison to LaTeX/TeX notation it is extremely unwieldy in manual use. The scenario I have in mind is typing equations by hand and TeX's way is simply superior for that. But hey, there are many ways to skin a cat and the problem is non-trivial, so even MathML would be "something"… just not that convenient "something" 😊

[PaoloT]

10 hours ago, thebodzio said:

TeX's way is simply superior for that

I'll relaunch: also convertible by Pandoc – what about Typst, with its much clearer syntax?

 

[thebodzio]

19 hours ago, PaoloT said:

I'll relaunch: also convertible by Pandoc – what about Typst, with its much clearer syntax?

 

It is the first I have ever heard about Typst. I will keep an eye on it. Thanks for an interesting reference! 😊

About its math syntax. Obviously, I have never used it in depth so what I say here is based on a cursory study of the manual. Please keep that in mind. Having said that: frankly speaking, I do not find it any clearer… nor more confusing than TeX/LaTeX. Just different. That's all. I can certainly picture myself using it, but not craving to do so. It is fine, I guess. No complains yet, no great advantages seen either.

I think, at this point we have to make a very important distinction between math description language and math input method. The former would be used by Publisher to "hold its math", the latter would be utilized by the user to input it. As you have suggested: if needs be, Pandoc or Pandoc-like app could provide the necessary translation. As long as it would be done transparently (relying on external tools to just "type math" would be a horrible thing) of reasonable quality—if not 1 to 1 (which is not that certain, e.g. vertically scalable parentheses—a presentative attribute mixed-in with logical description)—it would be quite fine. If, at that, Publisher would remember the exact input method which I used for typing and the exact text I have typed in for further editing, then it would be a complete, satisfactory solution. As long as I have that, I do not really care that much what kind of whatha-ma-call-it, unholly, vowel-eating, hipster thing runs below 😊.

Then again, why not LaTeX syntax? It has been around for ages, it is popular, well tested and tried as well as easy to learn and fluently use. Typst certainly has its appeal, but let the time verify the trend.

[PaoloT]

13 minutes ago, thebodzio said:

Then again, why not LaTeX syntax?

No real reason. As you say, people who need it already know LaTeX, and have likely spent a lot of energies in learning it. I can't do any forecast, however I suspect Typst may replace it in a few years. I find the things related to typography more promising (as much as a system still under development can be), so I would guess it can be successful. They promise better handling of system fonts, multiple languages, and no need for most of the additional packages required by LaTeX. Maybe it's never too soon to be prepared to the future.

Paolo

 

[thebodzio]

1 minute ago, PaoloT said:

No real reason. As you say, people who need it already know LaTeX, and have likely spent a lot of energies in learning it. I can't do any forecast, however I suspect Typst may replace it in a few years. I find the things related to typography more promising (as much as a system still under development can be), so I would guess it can be successful. They promise better handling of system fonts, multiple languages, and no need for most of the additional packages required by LaTeX. Maybe it's never too soon to be prepared to the future.

Paolo

 

On that we can agree 😊👍. The promise is certainly there and unless time will prove some design decisions bad, it should be fulfilled. From my side, I especially note the inherent ability to specify colour in okLCh, device CMYK and okLab. It is significant, I am not going to lie.

As for the main topic of this discussion: surely, having an ability to typeset equations built-in into Publisher would be a big thing and a strong selling point. So… let us keep it on our respective wishlists, shall we? 😉

 

[BobH]

On 12/9/2024 at 10:06 AM, jimrome said:

Please support MathML equations. It is really difficult to use Publisher for any technical document. I cannot even find out how to put a SVG equation into the middle of text.

I support this wholeheartedly.  Also the note below that LaTeX would be good.  In fact, LaTeX is  perhaps the best route. At this point, I am relegated to having to use MS Word (Ugh!) for my technical publications because everything I do involves equations.

[Petar Petrenko]

I prefer the way equations are build in Word, than LaTeX. It is more intuitive and no need to memorize phrases used for creating them.

[thebodzio]

7 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I prefer the way equations are build in Word, than LaTeX. It is more intuitive and no need to memorize phrases used for creating them.

Now, nobody says LaTeX/whatever syntax could not or should not by accompanied by some clicky-thingy interface, but I would strongly argue for a convenient, textual input method in the first place. Even the said Word has it (although I frown on the overall convenience of its interface in general, I can not say it is unusable—it is just… "special"). Sure, one can click-through almost anything, given the sane interface is in place, but there are things which are waaaaay more conveniently done with keyboard. For instance, we can select tools in Affinity Photo, Designer or… anything, really, by pointing them on the toolbar, but these constant mouse-hunts get rather annoying quite quickly. So, we have shortcuts to prevent users from pulling their hair out (you should see my hairline, BTW 😜).

Besides, when it comes to everyday math, there is not that much common syntax to memorize anyway (and I do include integrals, arrays, matrices, Greek symbols and the like)

My point is: clickable? Sure! But writeable first and foremost.

[jimrome]

I need to be able to typeset things like this:

[thebodzio]

3 hours ago, jimrome said:

I need to be able to typeset things like this:

So do we… which is exactly why a classic TeX/LaTeX comes to mind 👍😊👍

[jimrome]

Would be nice to have integrated MathType support.

[thebodzio]

As long as we are talking about entry method (GUI vs./and typed-in) we are basically arguing for the same thing 😊

[fde101]

17 hours ago, jimrome said:

I need to be able to typeset things like this:

I would actually suggest you simply learn to create those documents in LaTeX directly rather than bother with a DTP application.  It has a learning curve sure, but if you regularly create documents like that, it would be worth it in the long run.

That said, integrated equation support in Publisher would certainly be nice to have as well - I just don't think I would use it if I had to prepare a document like the example given there; I would more likely create it in LaTeX, as I did when I had such documents to prepare back in my college days (if memory serves I believe it was actually a requirement to use LaTeX for such documents when I was there, but it was a good one, at least for the math/computer science department).

[3289429830]

19 小时前，Jimrome 说：

我需要能够排版这样的东西：

如果你觉得latex太复杂，你可以先去试一试markdown，但是好像markdown不支持横向的排版，不过仅仅是用来快速渲染公式肯定是比latex更迅速

[jimrome]

But Affinity does not integrate with LaTex either. I would gladly learn it.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, jimrome said:

But Affinity does not integrate with LaTex either. I would gladly learn it.

Why would it need to?  LaTeX is not just for equations; you can create entire documents with it.

[jimrome]

Then no need to use affinity! It is much easier to do things in a GUI environment. If I could easily insert TeX markups in Publisher text, that would work too. Then Publisher would do things like making line spacing bigger to fit the in line equation.

[sfriedberg]

I would also like to see MathML support.  I would prefer that Affinity spend its time on a more general tagged text replacement plugin system, and build equations, bibliographic reference processing, and lots of apparently unrelated things on top of that text replacement system.  In fact, they should publish the plugin API and let the user community build the specific plugins.

Such a system needs to take "tagged marked up" text of some variety, pass it through the plugin appropriate for the tag, and then replace the tagged marked up text with the output of the plugin, for the purposes of flow and typesetting.  The tagged marked up text remains in the Affinity document, and possibly will be replaced with different output in the future.  That's the view from 50,000 feet.  Lots of details to work out, and you probably don't want a raw text replacement, but rather something based on a well-defined document object model (DOM) so you can insert images and multiline equation display blocks and something that supports fully styled text.  That means Affinity would have to open the kimono at least slightly in defining the public API.

Furthermore, to support complex 2D equation display blocks "natively", you need access to a lot more than character styling controls.  You can do it with CSS controls, but in general you need nested 2D regions with inherited styling. That would have to be exposed through the DOM.  The alternative is for the plugin to generate an SVG file (or something similar) and insert the image as the replacement "text", which is how I currently get my non-inline equations into Publisher.

[Petar Petrenko]

If you prefer LaTeX or MathML then why don't we ask Affinity to redefine all three apps to work like this (instead of clicking on ellipse -- or any other -- tool and draw ellipse or circle):

'insert elipse on coords(x, y) with dimension (x, y) with fill = None and stroke width = 1 pt and now insert rectangle on coords(x, y) with dimensions(x, y) fill = None and stroke width = 1 and merge them'.

So, we won't need mice, tablets... Just entering formulas all the way.