[Solved] Alternative to AOO Math

[Horus]

The fact is that there are many slight and serious bugs and shortcomings in OOO Math. While waiting for the never-coming bug fixes and implementation I have come up with an alternative to using OOO Math:

Use image instead of Math object

Here are two suggestions:

1. Go to http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php

• Type in math expressions, use large font and high resolution to have better quality/resolution when the image is pasted
• Download image
• Paste image into doc

2. Use Wikipedia's math rendering engine

• Use Wikipedia Sandbox at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox
• Similarly, type in math expression using Wikipedia syntax, eg <math>a = x + y</math>
• Show the preview and right-click on the image to save it
• NB: Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula for the syntax
• Contrary to the first suggestion, it's not possible to change resolution of Wikipedia rendered images

Recommendation/reminder: save the text-based LaTeX or Wikimath expressions as picture's "Description" to make it easier to change the expression in the future.

HTH

PS: I suppose a lot of OOO Math fans are going to hate me but please don't start flame war.

[RGB]

Last version of EqualX (0.6 beta) provides SVG output, and you can just drag and drop from the program to Writer. The result is just perfect, but I'm not sure how easy is to install that software (and all its dependencies) on windows...

[Horus]

Oh yeah, that's nice. But I fell into a trap because I was too impatient :p
For Windows, one has to go to its official web site first, then documentation and read that it needs another package to work.
In short, go to http://miktex.org/ and download that thing before EqualX. And it will keep on downloading a lot more of other packages.

Drag-n-drop of the rendered image is buggy in Windows which explains why it's still in beta. But it's really really great

[Horus]

I have just tried to install this in my Win7 x64 but it turned out to be very hair-tearing and troublesome.

During installation:

• 32-bit setup just crashes all the time on the 1st run (I've tried this in several computers -- same result). Then Win7 would pop-up a window to suggest alternative method. I chose "Reinstall using recommended settings" on the 2nd run, but I had to destroy installation directory left by 1st run
• 64-bit setup would crash most of the time without "Reinstall using recommended settings"! Cross-finger that it won't happen to you. Maybe it's writing too much data to the disk in a too short period of time and the disk I/O is too saturated.

Running EqualX:

• EqualX is lost (image not rendered) because MiKTeX executable folder does not match the default one set by EqualX
• 32-bit setup installs things to C:/Program Files (x86)/MiKTeX 2.9/miktex/... instead of C:/Program Files/MiKTeX 2.9/miktex/...
  Go to Edit > Preferences > Commands tab and change all the path to include (x86)
• 64-bit setup installs executables to C:/Program Files/MiKTeX 2.9/miktex/bin/x64/
  So, like above, add x64/ to every path to the executables.

Hope this helps