Embedding MathML

racc11 · Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 1:40 pm Post subject: Embedding MathML

I wonder why OpenOffice 2.0 includes an option to save a document as Word 2003 Rolling Eyes

and yet there is no option to save a document with the embedded formulas as MathML. Gecko (i.e. Firefox and Netscape) can render MathML natively, and for those poor souls using MSIE there is a plugin to do it. There's no reason to keep saving a bunch of GIFs with a page.
Could this be a feature in version 2.01? Idea

shubhrakant · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:56 pm Post subject: It is really strange.

It is one of the handicaps with OO. I feel this could come in the way of faster OO adoption and migration.

In fact we are unable to migrate fully to OO due to this.
_________________
=Shubhrakant
Books Group of Companies.

Ed · Super User Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 1040

There was an extension at one time that allowed Writer to save as LaTeX or HTML/MathML. I haven't seen any reference to it recently, and I don't know whether it will work with current versions of OOo (I think it was 1.1.something that I used it with).

There is also this issue requesting it to be integrated into the standard build.

David · Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:22 am Post subject:

An issue with all word processors is that they are word processors, not math programs. What is wrong with using a real math program for real math?

One of the handicaps of Word is that it will not even open a writer file! Their math editor is a limited version of MathType. If you want to do more advanced math, you'd need the fuller version. Also useful are programs such as DeltaCad for doing 2D geometric constructions, Graphmatica for 2D function and data set graphing, Mupad, Derive, Maple, Mathematica, Fathom, SPSS software, or others for 3D graphing and complex algebraic notation or statistics and application, ...and more, all transferable to a word processor.

So, why do you think that the Writer word processor is particularly more 'handicapped' than any other word processor in this regard?

P.S. I really have no opinion on which word processor you might choose to use any more than the car you might wish to drive. If I was given one free, I'd personally not be as choosy. If you want to spend the money for similarly handicapped software [there's nothing on this planet that is perfect for everyone], then please do so.

David.

acknak · Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 10:43 am Post subject:

The Math component (formula editor) can save a formula as MathML.

The embedded formulas are 99% MathML already: you can copy/paste the formula embedded in the ODF file into a Mozilla browser and get something pretty close to the correct formula. Note: I'm not saying that it's usable, only that it's already very close to MathML as it is.

What good would it do to have the embedded formulas in MathML?

I expect that the intention is that you extract the formulas from the ODF document and transform that into MathML if that's what you need.

Ed · Super User Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 1040

acknak · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 7:15 am Post subject:

Sorry, the OP didn't mention exporting to (X)HTML, only "embedding in a document."

http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=80816

There is a link in there to an export filter, and an attached sample output.

Edit:
Oops, the correct link is Issue 72924: Export-XHTML: Known OLE Objects are not traversed, which is marked as a duplicate of Issue 22012.