Math plugins

[betty]

A client of mine publishes a professional journal, which includes a lot of mathematical and scientific formulas and equations. They recieve the original text and equations as (mostly) MS Word documents. Currently the journal designer re-creates the formulas as graphics and then places them into the InDesign documents.

I've been asked to look at math plugins for InDesign to make typesetting the equations easier. I'll look at Math Magic (pricy!) and Math Type, plus any suggestions from the group.

If you use a plugin, which do you like best?
What features are important in a math plugin?

Thanks!
Betty Taylor

[Andrew Brown]

On 18 mars 2013, at 17:38, betty <betty_...@comcast.net> wrote:

I've been asked to look at math plugins for InDesign to make typesetting the equations easier. I'll look at Math Magic (pricy!) and Math Type, plus any suggestions from the group.

The general consensus seems to be that ID and maths do not make a happy couple. I have found a way to handle simple fractions that look good, but in a volume I am working on now most of the maths will be straight-lined and the rest will be set with TeX.

There is also the question of what happens after ID -- if you are thinking in terms of an electronic future for your publications, equations as graphics may not be a good idea.

Michel Raj seems to be the person on the list most involved in maths, perhaps he has a different take.

AB

[William Adams]

On Mar 18, 2013, at 12:38 PM, betty wrote:

> If you use a plugin, which do you like best?

I use LaTeXiT, which allows one to use TeX for the equations:

http://pierre.chachatelier.fr/latexit/latexit-home.php?lang=en

It works pretty well in InDesign using Services, though I think the .rtf wrapping which added baseline shift information got broken at some up-date or other.

William

--
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

[Michel Raj]

Thanks Andrew.

Everything I'm aware of has been said.

If MathMagic is pricy, I only see two alternatives MathType and LaTeXiT (if you know how to code equations in TeX or LaTeX).

I worked with MathType on the last maths books I had to do, because: 

- I got all the equations in MathType, and could easily recover them in ID.

- The client is afraid of TeX work, he's more reassured with InDesign, as it's known as a "standard". He refused to work with someone proposing to do the job in TeX... As there are not many designers working with TeX, he feels it's dangerous to rely on only a few people.

- I didn't have the time to learn TeX and was afraid to start a book and having to face some problems with TeX that I couldn't solve here on my own.

- It's cheap. But this is not the most important point.

Now, it has to be known that MathType gives different results on Mac and PC and their support is poor.

So I would say that if you find the time to learn it, TeX or LaTeX is the way to go. This will please William ;-)

Either alone, or within InDesign, as PDF graphics.

And as Andrew says, if where thinking of electronic future, imported graphics are not the best idea.

I really should learn the TeX way. I'll have soon a bit of spare time and retry LaTeXit first.

Michel

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[Yanchak, James]

Betty, 

I would wave you off of considering MathType.  While it is cheap, easy, and prolific, the failure of Design Science to update their program has crippled it for post-print work. We use MathType for our InDesign math titles and the number of issues in ebooks and reprints have been steadily climbing despite efforts to head them off.

As much as I love using InDesign I agree with Michel, serious math titles should be handled in TeX/LaTeX.  This should reduce production issues and limit future surprises with a single program handling the equations and layout. 

James Yanchak

Production Technologies Manager

CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

An Informa Company

On Mar 18, 2013, at 12:38 PM, betty wrote:

[Dick Margulis]

On 3/18/2013 3:07 PM, Yanchak, James wrote:
>
> As much as I love using InDesign I agree with Michel, serious math
> titles should be handled in TeX/LaTeX. This should reduce production
> issues and limit future surprises with a single program handling the
> equations and layout.
>

I was approached to do a math-heavy book (in the end, the prospective
client and I chose to go our separate ways, but not because of the
math), and in the process I acquired MathType and also downloaded and
installed LaTeX.

I found both quite easy to master for the equations, and if memory
serves there was even a relatively easy way to go back and forth between
them. The output was different, and in my opinion the LaTeX output was
more elegant and traditional.* Were I to bid another math-heavy book,
and if I had the choice, I'd go with TeX/LaTeX. Nothing to be scared of,
particularly if you have any sort of math background.

Dick

* The material in question had a lot of matrix math. In MathType, each
matrix and vector was sized according to its content, so a three-row
matrix had shorter and thinner brackets than a four-row matrix. In
LaTeX, the whole equation had consistently sized brackets. This made a
much neater appearance on the page.

[betty]

Thanks for the responses so far. Very helpful.

I did say that MathMagic is pricy: however, we'd consider it if it is the best solution. Does anyone use it?

It would be great if the equations would also work well if the journal ends up as an ePub, which I could see happening eventually.

Thanks again,
Betty Taylor

[William Adams]

On Mar 19, 2013, at 10:21 AM, betty wrote:

> It would be great if the equations would also work well if the journal ends up as an ePub, which I could see happening eventually.

That's a big problem.

Unfortunately, mathml only barely made it into the ePub3 spec component:

http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-contentdocs.html#sec-xhtml-mathml

which sounds great, until one looks at actual implementations:

http://www.mathjax.org/resources/epub-readers/

so one pretty much has to make a .svg as alternate representation, unless one is going to strictly limit one's support.

[Anastasiya Pechenko]

One more plug-in for mathml support is MathML Kit for Adobe Creative Suite https://scand.com/products/mathml-kit/

[Anastasiya Pechenko]

I use MathML Kit for Adobe Creative Suite https://scand.com/products/mathml-kit/, trial version for 30 -day also available.

[Anastasiya Pechenko]

You can try MathML Kit for Adobe Creative Suite https://scand.com/products/mathml-kit/

On Monday, March 18, 2013 at 7:38:10 PM UTC+3, betty wrote: