Chemical Notation in OpenOffice

Jmcgrory · Newbie Joined: 15 Mar 2006 Posts: 2

I've got a chemistry project to type up and I have noticed there is no facility in standard open office for chemical symbols such as the two-directional arrow used to represent equilibrium in reactions (thats the one I noticed, there may be others).

Does anyone know of any add-ons which enable the use of these symbols in openoffice writer and if so, where can I find it?

Thank you in advance.

yuki · OOo Advocate Joined: 20 Oct 2005 Posts: 264

Either: Insert -> Special Character... and help yourself in the Open Symbol font.
Or: Insert -> Object -> Formula (F4)... and do the it as equations.

Jmcgrory · Newbie Joined: 15 Mar 2006 Posts: 2

Thank you for the help but unfortunately thats not the symbol I need. Its two lines one on top of the other eavh with half an arrow head on the top left of the top one and the bottom right of the bottom one.

That except, tidier and maybe less drawn in MS paint. Laughing

BillP · Super User Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 2702

You can download free chemistry fonts with this symbol. Just search for "chemistry font" and "true type".

Jallan · OOo Advocate Joined: 16 Jan 2006 Posts: 267

OpenOffice itself mostly has no particularly facility for supplying "special" characters. It just uses the fonts your system supplies.

The character you want is Unicode U+21CB LEFTWARDS HARPOON OVER RIGHTWARDS HARPOON: ⇋ . If you can see it in this post, you already have a font with that character.

You can probably find a font containing this character through http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html#general or http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/math.html .

yuki · OOo Advocate Joined: 20 Oct 2005 Posts: 264

I know this does not help in this particular case, but I have come across a discussion of chemical notation in another forum, where the use of wide vectors was suggested. Note the tildes (~) to space...

b87203050 · Newbie Joined: 20 Jul 2008 Posts: 1

Could we tell the OpenOffice team to add this subject to the Math plugin. This may be the best way to solve the problem and http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=31283 too.
In fact, I can do it on M$ word, but i don't like to use equation in word ( because i do not like to switch my hands between keyboard and mouse at all hour).

Yes, I know I can do it on LaTeX with some scripting, but not all computer are bound with LaTex.

ps: How could I give my idea to the OO team

Hagar Delest · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 5:41 am Post subject:

Already reported, see here: [Issue] Chemical reaction arrow.
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David · Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 9:26 am Post subject:

It's available in MathType. Is there no also specialty software for doing just that sort of thing?

David.

Robert Tucker · Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 11:09 pm Post subject:

Using OOoLatex.

Install chemarrow.sty from:

http://ctan.releasenotes.org/macros/latex/contrib/chemarrow/chemarrow.sty

On Linux:

# mkdir /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/chemarrow

and copy chemarrow.sty to it; then run:

# mktexlsr

Install the font arrow.mf from:

http://ctan.releasenotes.org/macros/latex/contrib/chemarrow/arrow.mf

On Linux:

# mkdir /usr/share/texmf/fonts/source/public/arrow

and copy arrow.mf to it; then run:

# texhash

Add:

\usepackage{chemarrow}

to the preamble in OOoLatex.

See:

www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=73962

for example use.
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