I didn’t see the following solution in any other responses. It’s probably the most reasonable one given the constraints of collaboration and publishing.
In the absence of using the best software, I found it practical to write the equations in MathType and save them as MathType PDF equations and then add these equations to the document. It is a portable, cross-platform-ish solution. Others only need to install a MathType player, which is free. The advantage is that if your equation gets hosed in the document, you still have the original, editable equation in the PDF. In such cases, you must re-embed it in your document, but it’s better than fully rewriting it. With that said, if you want to work behind a full-featured word processor and have access to the wonders of TeX typesetting, LibreOffice (OpenOffice) + TexMaths is the best for the author during preparation of a manuscript. At this point it is bug free (to my experience), embeds vector equations (SVG) or raster (PNG), is editable, and looks spectacular both when editing and when publishing/printing. The downside is that you have to collaborate with people you can’t force into using the best software. Worse, journals seem to use proprietary publishing software and they want MathType or equation editor with Microsoft word, hence my first solution. James On May 18, 2015, at 5:10 AM, Keller, Jacob <kell...@janelia.hhmi.org> wrote: > There is the possibility of using one of the open-source versions, like > openOffice, but those I guess also have their issues. > > JPK > > -----Original Message----- > From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Randy > Read > Sent: Monday, May 18, 2015 4:11 AM > To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK > Subject: [ccp4bb] Equation Editor woes with Office 2011 for Mac > > Rather off-topic, but maybe someone on the list has found a way to work > around this! > > There's a problem with the Equation Editor in Office 2011 for Mac (i.e. the > one that is based on a stripped-down version of MathType, which you get with > Insert->Object->Microsoft Equation). You can insert an equation, re-open it > and edit it several times, and then suddenly (and seemingly randomly) the > equation object will be replaced by a picture showing the equation, which can > no longer be edited. I'm writing a rather equation-heavy paper at the > moment, and this is driving me crazy. > > This seems to be a known bug, which has existed from the release of Office > 2011. Apparently it happens, unpredictably, when an AutoSave copy of the > document is saved, so you can avoid it by turning off the AutoSave feature. > The last time this drove me crazy, several years ago, I did try turning off > AutoSave. For a while, I was very good about manually saving frequently, but > I got into bad habits and eventually Word crashed after I had worked for > several hours on a grant proposal without manually saving. So I turned > AutoSave back on. > > At the moment, the least-bad solution seems to be to turn off AutoSave while > I'm working on a document with lots of equations and then (hopefully) > remember to turn it back on after that document is finished. But it would be > great if someone has come up with a better cure for this problem. > > No doubt someone will suggest switching from Word to LaTeX, but I need to be > able to collaborate on paper-writing, and even though I might be willing to > invest the effort in learning LaTeX, I can't really expect that of my > collaborators. Most people in our field do use Microsoft Word, regardless of > its failings. I've also tried using the professional version of MathType, > but that requires your collaborators to install it as well - and I don't > think that cured the equation to picture problem anyway. > > Thanks! > > ----- > Randy J. Read > Department of Haematology, University of Cambridge > Cambridge Institute for Medical Research Tel: +44 1223 336500 > Wellcome Trust/MRC Building Fax: +44 1223 336827 > Hills Road E-mail: > rj...@cam.ac.uk > Cambridge CB2 0XY, U.K. > www-structmed.cimr.cam.ac.uk
