Using MathCast with Word Processors


A very important feature of MathCast is the ability to use the equations you create with word processors. There are a few ways you can go about doing this, depending on which word processor you use.

When working with documents, you would usually want to keep MathCast open as well, so that you can switch between the word processor and MathCast. When you want to insert an equation to your document, use MathCast's Copy command from the "Edit Menu" to copy an equation to the clipboard, and then from the word processor's "Edit Menu" use paste.

Please note that MathCast's equations are not objects, but pictures. So double-clicking on them won't open MathCast. It is a good idea then, to keep a backup of your equations in an equations list file, along with your .doc file. Perhaps in future versions of MathCast you won't need to do this.

Working with "block style" equations in word processors is not a problem, just paste the equation and center it on the page. It's also really easy to paste the equations in tables, when you need.

Thus, this section will point out the problematic issues of working with MathCast and word processors.


Microsoft Word

There is a small problem inlining equations in a middle of a sentence. If you notice, the equations that you paste are slightly higher than the rest of the text. For some reason, Word doesn't have an option to center images in a row of text; you can move the picture around, but you can't align it to the center.

HTML however does support this option. So if you're creating HTML pages with Word, you can later make appropriate changes in the HTML itself. See Using MathCast with HTML.

What you can do to lower the equation in Word, is to lower the text around it. You do it like this: select the equation image along with the spaces around it, right click on the selected area, choose "font" from the popup menu, choose the tab called "spaces between characters" (or something similar), in this dialog window you can lower the text by pressing the down arrow in the same row called "location".

MathCast's Enhanced Metafile copy was designed to give higher pixel quality for the equations. This is especially important when creating documents, since you want the print quality to be very high. From the Settings Screen, you can select the one of two Enhanced Metafile copy types. The first one works correctly with Word 2000 and the second one with Word XP and Word 2003.


OpenOffice.org Writer

With OpenOfice.org, you can align an image to the center of a row of text, here is how: after you paste the equation image, click on in to select it, right click on the image and select "Anchor->As Character", then right click on the image again and select "Alignment->Base Line Centered".

When you use MathCast's Enhance Metafile copy, you might not be able to see the equation in Writer since it's too sharp. Just zoom in a bit to see it. The Enhanced Metafile copy was tested with OpenOffice.org 1.1.5, and it works correctly. OpenOffice.org's built-in Math editor supports MathML 1.0, but since MathCast uses MathML 2.0, you cannot import MathCast created equations into OpenOffice.org's Math.