General > General Technical Chat
Is there a math/equation GUI program like this ?
IanB:
--- Quote from: MathWizard on January 12, 2023, 07:12:08 pm ---When you are lying down and using a notebook/pencil is not easy, I could draw eqn's in a paint program, but I'm not good at that, especially lying down with a mouse on my chest.
So I was wondering is there some program, meant for people writing eqn's , to put as a picture in a presentation, or on a form. So in the program, there would be toolbars, and instead of placing circles, or resistors, you choose some math symbol or number/letter, and place it on the work space.
And I don't care if the program actually does math, I just want something else besides trying to draw eqn's in paint, when lying down. Maybe it would be really slow and not worth it. But I would put a circuit together in a sim, rather than draw it on paper or in paint, so I'd try a symbolic math editor/notepad
--- End quote ---
I just noticed, as per my post above, that the "Ink to Math" feature in MS Office (e.g. Word, or PowerPoint) lets you write equations with a pen on a touchscreen, and it converts them to properly formatted equations as you go. This seems to be the kind of thing you are looking for?
It obviously works also with a mouse, but it is very painful trying to write or draw with a mouse cursor. A pen and touchscreen is much easier.
alm:
Is Word usable for complex technical documents these days? Let's say a hundred pages, dozens of large figures, tables across multiple pages, equations, cross references everywhere and all that jazz? My experiences in the 2003 days were that Word would completely choke, references would break at random, scrolling would be at glacial speed, and the only way around it would be to give up on automated cross references and split the document in pieces.
IanB:
--- Quote from: alm on January 16, 2023, 10:05:58 pm ---Is Word usable for complex technical documents these days? Let's say a hundred pages, dozens of large figures, tables across multiple pages, equations, cross references everywhere and all that jazz? My experiences in the 2003 days were that Word would completely choke, references would break at random, scrolling would be at glacial speed, and the only way around it would be to give up on automated cross references and split the document in pieces.
--- End quote ---
I certainly use Word for technical documents with figures, tables and equations. Is it better for large documents than it used to be? I couldn't say, since large documents have always been Word's Achilles' heel. I don't hit too many bugs with the Office 365 version, but I do hit some, especially with the drawing tools. Most of the time if something misbehaves I can undo the change with Ctrl-Z and try it a different way, or close and reopen. What bugs I come across are mostly with mishandling of user inputs rather than corrupting the document. It's been a while since I have seen a corrupted docx file.
One thing I have learned is to work with the low level LaTex-like features of Word, such as proper use of paragraph styles, field codes and so on. Many of the "ease of use" features such as ad-hoc formatting controls tend to create a mess behind the scenes. For figures, one should always insert a drawing canvas, and never put graphical shapes directly on the page. The new equation editor has been improved in recent versions and now accepts a subset of LaTex equation macros.
I can't tell you it is bulletproof, but it does satisfy my working requirements for very technical engineering documents.
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: alm on January 16, 2023, 10:05:58 pm ---Is Word usable for complex technical documents these days? Let's say a hundred pages, dozens of large figures, tables across multiple pages, equations, cross references everywhere and all that jazz?
--- End quote ---
Probably, but I personally use LaTeX for that kind of documents. This invariably leads to less frustration and much better looking documents.
IanB:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on January 17, 2023, 03:25:07 am ---Probably, but I personally use LaTeX for that kind of documents. This invariably leads to less frustration and much better looking documents.
--- End quote ---
On the other hand, such documents generally end up looking like "LaTeX", which gets boring after a while. Few people bother to change the default font and style options.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version