Ah, yes, right.
Why on earth in the year 2008 can’t we easily type equations that look like equations?
When compared to displaying simple text on the screen, displaying mathematical equations is not a simple task. I suspect it’s due to the two-dimensional nature of modern mathematical notation, and the large variety of symbols in use, and the variations in length and width for the same symbol in different equations.
The two prominent solutions to this problem are TeX and MathML.
TeX (and its more versatile templating system LaTeX) was invented by computer genius Donald Knuth when be became frustrated with the piss-poor quality of typesetting in the 1960s. Although it is capable of laying out entire documents (and is often used for this), it is also widely used to display mathematical equations. Wikipedia has support for TeX-formatted equations.
MathML is a more recent development, jumping on the XML bandwagon. It’s more verbose and less people-friendly than TeX, but marginally more computer-friendly, due to its XML nature. (Recent versions of Mozilla-based browsers can display MathML equations. Wikipedia’s support of TeX uses MathML as an intermediary format.) Wikipedia’s page on MathML gives you a taste of it.
In theory, it’s easy to add MathML (and even TeX) support to a website like the SDMB. In practice, however, it means adding a little more processing on the server and web browser. Displaying a large enough equation will bring my poor office computer to its knees, and I’m sure the hamsters powering the SDMB wouldn’t appreciate the extra workload either. Then there’s the problem of deciding whether your users will get a fancy math-aware interface, or if you should expect them to learn either TeX or MathML.
Please note that both TeX and MathML only help in displaying mathematical equations. Calculating and manipulating such equations is an entirely different set of problems; you’ll need a symbolic algebra program such as Mathematica (expensive) or Yacas (free).
It’s not too difficult in Word, if you install the Equation Editor tool.
Which is great if and only if (a) you aren’t getting too jiggy with the equations, and (b) you’re only going to use Word to view documents with.
Ok, you can export equations from Word to an image format for inclusion in (for example) a webpage… but it’s not a simple one-click process, not by a long shot. It’s also a one-way process, so someone would need your original .doc in order to make any changes to the equation.
It gets better. Due to Microsoft’s refusal to support standards in this arena, even with the latest and (supposedly) greatest Office 2007, the journals Science and Nature are starting to refuse papers submitted in Word format. :smack:
The “word” equation editor used to NOT install by default. (not sure of current versions) So if you were at the mercy of a corporate IT department, it often took days or weeks to get it fixed.
Not true. Consider the expression 12/23. If multiplication takes precedence, that evaluates to 12/23 = 12/6 = 2. But if division takes precedence, it evaluates to 12/23 = 63 = 18.
[quote]
It’s not too difficult in Word, if you install the Equation Editor tool.
[quote]
I haven’t tried using the Word equation editor lately, but I still have nightmares about the last time I did try. It was a lot easier to end up with unholy aberrations like a single parenthesis on top of a fraction bar, than to do what you were actually trying to do. I do remember that the Lotus programs had a beautifully powerful and intuitive equation editor, and the higher-end HP calculators have a very good equation editor that doesn’t even need a mouse to be used smoothly.