The purpose of these notes is to attempt to describe MathType 5's new features in a manner appropriate for a member of the press that is intending to write a review of the product. We encourage you to also browse the rest of our web site to get an even more complete picture of Design Science and its products.

MathType Background

MathType 5.0 is a new version of Design Science’s MathType mathematical equation editing software for Windows 98, 2000, Me, NT, and XP. Its users include math and science teachers preparing tests and other classroom materials, college students preparing papers, college faculty preparing tests, classroom materials, research papers, Web pages, and presentations, and scientists and engineers in industry and academia.

MathType 5.0 is an OLE 2 object server, allowing equation objects to be placed in documents created by any application that supports OLE, including word processors, page layout programs, presentation programs, databases, graphing programs, etc. It also can produce equations as Windows metafiles (WMF), Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), Graphics Interchange Format (GIF). Its equations can be converted to TeX, LaTeX, AMS-TeX, AMS-LaTeX, and MathML 1.0 and 2.0 code. MathML is the XML-based mathematical description language made an official Recommendation in April, 1998 by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, see http://www.w3.org/Math/ for more information).

MathType is the full-featured version of Equation Editor, which Design Science licenses to Microsoft for use in its Office, Word, PowerPoint, and Works packages, Corel for use in Ventura and WordPerfect, as well as many other software companies. Design Science offers MathType as an upgrade to users of products that include Equation Editor, offering them more mathematical characters and templates, the ability to save to various graphic file formats, the ability to save expressions on its toolbar for quicker equation creation and editing, greater control over formatting, TeX and MathML translation, web page creation, and more.

New Features

MathPage: From Word to the Web

The single most important new feature in MathType 5.0 is our new MathPage technology for creating web pages containing math from Microsoft Word documents. First, though, let's discuss the problem that MathPage was invented to solve.

Putting Math on the Web is Hard!

Putting documents containing math on the web has always been a real challenge. Most people that have no need to deal with math in their web pages have a hard time understanding this, so we'll review the problems trying to simply type math in as HTML:

Math uses lots of symbols that are not in the usual fonts installed on the browsing user's system.
HTML does not have sufficient facilities to lay out mathematical formulas. It allows superscripts and subscripts, but that's about it.
Although modern HTML is built around Unicode technology for representing characters, browsers don't fully implement it. Also, many math characters are not in Unicode anyway.

One solution is to create GIF images for each equation. MathType, in fact, is one of the best tools around for doing this. The GIFs it creates are smaller and more accurately sized than simply taking a screen shot, for example. Also, the font and character problems are solved as a GIF needs no fonts for proper display. However, GIF equations have their own set of problems:

HTML and CSS do not provide an easy way to make an equation GIF sit on the baseline of the line of text in which they are embedded. This is another problem that CSS experts that have never tried it find very hard to believe, but this is crucial to good-looking math pages.
When a web page is printed, the GIF equations will look pixilated as they have the same resolution as the screen, while the normal HTML text is printed with the full resolution of the printer. Equations often contain very small accents, superscripts, and subscripts that are hard to see on-screen, so it is particularly irritating when they don't look any better when printed.
Browsing computers' screen resolution may vary, so it is difficult to make the web page look good for all users.
The authoring process is somewhat tedious as each GIF has to be created, saved to disk, and imported into the web page.

Since many of our users create technical documents using Microsoft Word, one obvious thing to try is Word's Save as Web Page command. Unfortunately, it doesn't do a very good job either. A little later, we'll let you compare a Word-generated web page with one generated using MathPage from the same document.

MathPage: Our Solution

MathType has included additional commands on a MathType menu within Microsoft Word for years. With MathType 5.0, we've added the Export to MathPage command. MathPage works by pre-processing the Word document, invoking Word's Save as Web Page feature, then post-processing the result. We improve the built-in Save as Web Page functionality using several techniques:

We give the user the choice of generating math symbols and equations as GIF images or MathML. In this section, we'll restrict our discussion to the GIF choice and leave MathML for a later section.
We search the original Word document for symbols that we know browsers will have trouble with and replace them with GIF images.
We use MathType's GIF generation code, rather than Word's. This gives us more control over the process.
For each symbol and equation, we generate several GIFs at different resolutions. This allows us to adapt the page within the user's browser to the screen resolution. Also, one of the GIFs is at 300 dpi, and is used when the page is printed to give laser printer quality. Finally, one resolution is used to support our MathZoom feature.
JavaScript code is used to adapt the page to the user's browser and screen resolution, and to baseline-align each equation and symbol.
We convert MathType's equation numbering into appropriate hyperlinks within the generated page.
MathType's internal equation data is stored inside each equation GIF. This allows the user viewing a page to drag-and-drop any equation into their own copy of MathType to use in creating their own documents.
No plug-ins or fonts are required to view the page.

MathZoom

As pointed out above, one of the problems with viewing math on the web is that small accents, subscripts, and superscripts can often be hard to read. With MathZoom, we have come up with a unique solution to this problem. In a MathPage-generated web page, the user can click on any equation to see it expanded in a "tooltip" style familiar to Windows users. Be sure to try it out when you view the MathPage sample in the next section.

Compare Word's Web page with MathPage's page

Just compare the quality of a web page created with Word's Save as Web Page... with the same page created using MathType 5's MathPage feature.

MathPage and MathML

MathPage technology will also allow you to save a Word document as an HTML web page containing MathML islands for the equations and symbols. MathML is the XML-based standard for publishing Math on the Web. MathML can be viewed in supporting browsers, like Mozilla and Amaya, and popular MathML viewing software such as Design Science's MathPlayer™ and WebEQ Math Viewer.

MathPlayer

Although we feel that MathML technology is still in its infancy due to its admittedly shaky browser support, we expect the situation to change very soon. Mozilla is becoming a more mature browser, with more bugs and performance problems being addressed every day. Also, when we release our new MathPlayer software, a free add-on for Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser that enables it to display MathML, MathML will really start to take off.

Click here for more information about MathPlayer.

More about Math on the Web

Math on the Web is a fast changing area of technology. Let us help you stay informed:

Design Science publishes the paper, Math on the Web: A Status Report, every six months to inform the math, science, and education community on what is going on in the Math on the Web world..
Join our Math on the Web Mailing List to stay up-to-date on Math on the Web.

Other New Commands for Microsoft Word

Earlier versions of MathType included MathType-specific commands for Microsoft Word. Now, in addition to our new MathPage technology that converts Word documents to web pages, MathType 5 includes several other new commands for Word, all on a handy MathType toolbar:

Export Equations

The powerful Export Equations command allows you to easily export the equations in a Word document into a folder as individual EPS, GIF, or WMF files, making it is easier than ever to work with page layout programs (such as QuarkXPress, InDesign and PageMaker), and HTML-authoring tools.

Equation Numbering

MathType 5 includes additional options for numbering equations. In addition to section and equation numbers, you can now optionally include chapter numbers, more custom number formats and the ability to set a default number format for other documents.

Insert Left-hand Equation Numbers

MathType 5 allows you to insert chapter, section and equation numbers aligned at the left margin, followed by a display (centered) equation. This is in addition to your current ability to insert a display equation followed by a section and equation number aligned with the right margin.

Unlimited Undo

Earlier versions of MathType allowed you to undo only the very last editing operation. MathType 5 now lets you undo one step at a time, all the way back to the way your equation was at the start of the editing session.

Add/Delete Matrix Rows and Columns

To help you save time, you can now add or delete rows and columns within existing matrices and tables by using the commands on the new Matrix menu.

New MathML 2.0 Translators

MathML 2.0 was recently adopted as a W3C Recommendation with many improvements over MathML 1.0. MathType 5 now includes new translators for MathML 2.0, MathML 1.0 translators, and we've improved our TeX and LaTeX translators.

Microsoft Office XP (Word 2002) Support

MathType 5.2 has been thoroughly tested with Microsoft Office 2003, providing same level of functionality as with Office 97, 2000 and XP. MathType 5 continues to work with earlier versions of Word, but the additional MathType menu and toolbar commands within Word will not be available.

Microsoft Windows XP Support

MathType 5.2 has been tested thoroughly on the following Windows operating systems: Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP.

Getting More Information

The complete list of features is provided on our web site. Also worth visiting is our Math on the Web section where we explain the fast-changing world of mathematics on the web.

If you have questions about any of our products, technologies or our company, contact Bruce Virga, Vice President, Sales & Marketing at 800-827-0685, 562-432-2920, email: brucev@dessci.com, or fax at 562-432-2857. Additional sales and technical support information can be found at our web site: http://www.dessci.com. Personal technical support may be obtained by calling us at 562-432-2920 or by email: support@dessci.com.

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