Murray Sargent

Principal Software Engineer, CXE (Office Shared)

Yale BS, MS, PhD in theoretical physics. Worked 22 years in laser theory & applications first at Bell Labs and then Professor of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona. Worked on technical word processing, writing the first math display program (1969) and the technical word processor PS (1980s). Developed the SST debugger we used to get Windows 2.0 running in protected mode thereby eliminating the 640KB DOS barrier (1988). Have more than 100 refereed publications, 3 laser-physics books, 4 PC books, 163 posts on Math in Office blog. Joined Microsoft Research in 1992. Since 1994 have been in Microsoft Office working mostly on RichEdit and OfficeMath. Member of Unicode Technical Committee (1994—) and MathML Working Group (1999—).

Post by this author

Default Math Properties

November 29th, 2022
Quite a few math properties have document default values. These default values are used if you don’t override them, which you can do usually by invoking a math context-menu option or programmatically by calling the ITextDocument2::SetProperty or ITextDocument2::SetMathProperties methods. Most properties pertain to “displayed” math zones...

RichEdit Hyperlinks

October 29th, 2022
RichEdit has two kinds of hyperlinks: automatic hyperlinks (autoURLs) and friendly-name hyperlinks. As its name suggests, the autoURL is automatically recognized by RichEdit as a hyperlink and is displayed as a URL. A friendly name hyperlink has a name, which is displayed, and a hidden instruction part that contains the URL. This post ...

Setting and Getting Text in Various Formats

September 29th, 2022
You can get and set text from/into RichEdit in a variety of formats including RTF, HTML, MathML, OMML, UnicodeMath, Nemeth Braille, and speech. This post documents RichEdit options for a general way to access text using ITextRange2::SetText2(options, bstr) and ITextRange2::GetText2(options, pbstr). As such, this post is for programmers. All ...

Computers I have known

August 29th, 2022
A friend recommended that since I got into computers a long time ago, I should post about how computers have changed over the years. Well, here goes a trip down memory lane! Analog and button pushing The first computer I ever used was an Electronics Associates analog computer at the Perkin Elmer Corporation where I worked as an intern in the...
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Microsoft 365 Modern Comments

July 26th, 2022
The new Modern Comments facility aims to give a similar commenting experience on the web and in native apps. On the desktop in Windows and the Mac, the editor component is RichEdit. The facility is a work in progress, and it is getting very nice. This post gives some background on incorporating RichEdit into the Microsoft 365 commenting ...

RichEdit Autoformatting

June 29th, 2022
RichEdit and Word have had the most elaborate autoformatting ever since Office 2007, namely math formula auto-buildup. A UnicodeMath expression builds up into OfficeMath as soon as it is unambiguous. Word and other programs have also had less ambitious autoformatting since late in the last century. Such functionality includes auto conversion ...
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Rounded Rectangles and Ellipses

May 22nd, 2022
In Word, PowerPoint, OneNote and RichEdit, you can enclose text in a rectangle by putting the text into a math “boxed formula” object. To try this out, type alt+= to enter a math zone and then \rect(a+b)<space>. This displays as as The “\rect(a+b)” is the UnicodeMath representation of this boxed formula. In MathML, the boxed ...
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OfficeMath

April 28th, 2022
Microsoft Word 2007 and RichEdit 6.0 introduced the native Office math facility. PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote followed suit in 2010, and Mac Word followed in 2011. But ironically the native math facility didn’t have a recognizable name. “Microsoft Equation Editor” (MEE) seemed natural, but that's the name of the Design Science math ...
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Two Phonetic Scripts: Vietnamese and Korean

March 2nd, 2022
A few years ago, I visited two very interesting countries, Vietnam and South Korea. Being actively involved in writing software (mostly RichEdit) for editing the world’s scripts, I was naturally fascinated to see Vietnamese and Korean text displayed in profusion. The Vietnamese and Korean scripts were designed with a common purpose in mind: ...

Windows 11 Notepad

February 22nd, 2022
The new Windows 11 Notepad uses RichEdit and runs on up-to-date Windows 11 installations. In addition to a Windows 11 look with rounded corners and a dark-theme option, the new Notepad includes several standard RichEdit editing enhancements, such as Alt+x for entering Unicode characters, Ctrl+} for toggling between matching brackets/...

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