Math in Office

Cascadia Code Font

August 14, 2021 Aug 14, 2021 08/14/21

Murray Sargent

For many years, I’ve wanted to use real mathematical notation in computer programs for code that is mathematical in nature. The document UnicodeMath discusses this in some detail in Section 6. Using UnicodeMath in Programming Languages. Over the years, some advances beyond ASCII (invented in the 1960’s!) have been made. For example, you ...

RichEdit Font Binding

July 25, 2021 Jul 25, 2021 07/25/21

Murray Sargent

Suppose a user pastes some plain text into a document. In principle, the text can contain any Unicode character. That includes virtually all characters used in the current languages of the world along with many ancient scripts and a plethora of symbols, mathematical and otherwise, that don’t belong to any language. The question arises as to ...

Switching from LaTeX to UnicodeMath Input Mode

June 4, 2021 Jun 4, 2021 06/4/21

Murray Sargent

Here’s a bit of a puzzle. When the user enters “a/b” in LaTeX mode and formats it with the Enter key, the ‘/’ is marked as “nobuildup”. If the user then switches to UnicodeMath input mode and enters a space after the linear fraction containing the ‘/’, the fraction won’t build up, by design. If you delete the / and reenter ...

RichEdit HTML Support

May 30, 2021 May 30, 2021 05/30/21

Murray Sargent

RichEdit has had limited HTML support for many years, but it wasn’t general enough to document publicly. A recent RichEdit client (to be described in a future post) needs better support, so we have been improving it. For example, we have added HTML copy/paste, images, and math (of course!) to the Microsoft Office riched20.dll. Ideally ...

Cool Windows Math Hot Key

April 29, 2021 Apr 29, 2021 04/29/21

Murray Sargent

The Windows key is used in a bunch of useful hot keys. Probably my favorite is Windows+Shift+s, which lets you copy any rectangular area on your screen(s) to the clipboard. I use this hot key a lot in describing application UI and other objects on the screen such as those in this post. I also use Windows+x y to see system info such as the name...

Math Accessibility Trees

March 29, 2021 Mar 29, 2021 03/29/21

Murray Sargent

This post discusses aspects of making mathematical equations accessible to blind people. Equations that are simple typographically, such as 𝐸 = 𝑚𝑐², are accessible with the use of standard left and right arrow key navigation and with each variable and two-dimensional construct being spoken or felt when the insertion point is moved to...

Some UnicodeMath Enhancements

February 15, 2021 Feb 15, 2021 02/15/21

Murray Sargent

In the years since UnicodeMath 3.1 was published, some improvements have been made. The converter that converts UnicodeMath to OfficeMath also converts LaTeX and Nemeth math braille to OfficeMath. The converter needs ways to provide OfficeMath math-object arguments even when these arguments are not marked as such in the math format. The ...

RichEdit Emoticon Shortcuts

January 27, 2021 Jan 27, 2021 01/27/21

Murray Sargent

Seems many email messages and IM’s include emoji smiley faces like 😊. You just type :-) and you get 😉 whether you want it or not! About a year ago, the Microsoft 365 RichEdit started offering such a facility. This post describes the built-in emoticon shortcut strings and the corresponding emoji characters and the APIs for enabling the ...

RichEdit Hot Keys

January 17, 2021 Jan 17, 2021 01/17/21

Murray Sargent

In the early microcomputer days, MS-DOS editors like pmate and teco depended on hot keys for navigation and other tasks. With the great support for the mouse, touch, and graphical interface aids like ribbons incorporated into later personal computers, the need for navigation hot keys was greatly diminished. But there are other hot keys that ...

MathML and OMML User Selection Attributes

December 26, 2020 Dec 26, 2020 12/26/20

Murray Sargent

Some assistive technology (AT) programs use MathML or OMML as conduits for generating math speech and braille from math-enabled apps. In addition, they would like to use these formats for editing math text as well as speaking it and displaying it on refreshable braille displays. To this end, the formats need selection attributes that identify ...