{"id":76,"date":"2020-09-24T12:35:34","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T19:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/?p=76"},"modified":"2021-03-30T11:02:21","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T18:02:21","slug":"math-in-office-2006-2019-listing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/math-in-office-2006-2019-listing\/","title":{"rendered":"Math in Office 2006\u20142019 Listing"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post gives links and brief introductions to my MSDN Math in Office<\/em><\/a> blog posts. Some of the posts aren\u2019t archived and don\u2019t have links. They might be the subjects of future posts.<\/p>\n

Contents<\/p>\n

Math Autocomplete. 6<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Zone Navigation. 6<\/a><\/p>\n

Using MathML-Based Speech to Edit Math in Different Math Models. 7<\/a><\/p>\n

Using Math Alphanumerics in Code and Web Pages. 7<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit 9 Additions. 7<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Property Sets. 7<\/a><\/p>\n

UI Automation Math Text Support 7<\/a><\/p>\n

OfficeMath UI 8<\/a><\/p>\n

OfficeMath. 8<\/a><\/p>\n

Converting Microsoft Equation Editor Objects to OfficeMath. 8<\/a><\/p>\n

Integrands, Summands, and Math Function Arguments. 8<\/a><\/p>\n

Copying Equations from Wikipedia into Office Applications. 8<\/a><\/p>\n

Equation-Editor Office-Math Feature Comparison. 9<\/a><\/p>\n

OneNote Math Assistant 9<\/a><\/p>\n

Representation of Math Accents. 9<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Animated GIFs. 9<\/a><\/p>\n

Microsoft Word EQ Field. 9<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Clipped Text 10<\/a><\/p>\n

Other Office Math Editing Facilities. 10<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Greek Letters. 10<\/a><\/p>\n

Setting and Getting Math Speech, Braille, UnicodeMath, LaTeX\u2026.. 10<\/a><\/p>\n

Recognizing LaTeX Input in UnicodeMath Input Mode. 10<\/a><\/p>\n

LaTeX Math in Office. 11<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Braille UI 11<\/a><\/p>\n

Math STIX Fonts 2.0 and UTR #25 Updates. 11<\/a><\/p>\n

Braille for Math Zones. 11<\/a><\/p>\n

Editing Math using MathML for Speech. 11<\/a><\/p>\n

Microsoft Office Math Speech. 12<\/a><\/p>\n

Unicode \u2013 Nemeth Character Mappings. 12<\/a><\/p>\n

Text Insertion Point 12<\/a><\/p>\n

UnicodeMath Version 3.1. 12<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking Subscripts, Superscripts, and Fractions. 12<\/a><\/p>\n

UnicodeMath. 13<\/a><\/p>\n

Nemeth Braille Alphanumerics and Unicode Math Alphanumerics. 13<\/a><\/p>\n

Nemeth Braille\u2014the first math linear format 13<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking of math\u2026.. 13<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Text Pointers. 13<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Accessibility Trees. 14<\/a><\/p>\n

Font Binding Refinement 14<\/a><\/p>\n

Unicode Math Calligraphic Alphabets. 14<\/a><\/p>\n

Wingdings with Cyrillic, Greek, etc., Characters. 14<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Font Binding. 14<\/a><\/p>\n

Inserting and Getting Math Text in RichEdit 15<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Language Tag Handling. 15<\/a><\/p>\n

Color Fonts. 15<\/a><\/p>\n

Single Line RichEdit Performance Runs. 15<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Input APIs. 15<\/a><\/p>\n

Autolink Color Contrast 16<\/a><\/p>\n

Equation Numbering in Office 2016. 16<\/a><\/p>\n

Hot Keys and altGr 16<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Colors. 16<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Language Tag. 16<\/a><\/p>\n

Two Phonetic Scripts: Vietnamese and Korean. 17<\/a><\/p>\n

Ruby Text Objects. 17<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Symbol Hierarchy. 17<\/a><\/p>\n

Smart Lighting. 17<\/a><\/p>\n

Entering Unicode Characters. 17<\/a><\/p>\n

Symbols and Emoji 18<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Plain-Text Controls. 18<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Greek Letter Bug Fixed. 18<\/a><\/p>\n

Crisp Text Display. 18<\/a><\/p>\n

OpenType Math Tables. 18<\/a><\/p>\n

BiDi Hyperlinks. 19<\/a><\/p>\n

More on Equation Numbering. 19<\/a><\/p>\n

Book on Technical Writing in Word. 19<\/a><\/p>\n

UTF-8 RTF. 19<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Hot Keys. 19<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit 8 Feature Additions. 20<\/a><\/p>\n

Emoji 20<\/a><\/p>\n

Flyweight RichEdit Controls. 20<\/a><\/p>\n

Arabic and Mathematical Enclosures. 20<\/a><\/p>\n

MathML on the Windows Clipboard. 20<\/a><\/p>\n

Pasting Bitmaps into Text 21<\/a><\/p>\n

The Alpha Channel 21<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit 8 Performance Improvements. 21<\/a><\/p>\n

A Math Build-up Bug. 21<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 Touch Support 21<\/a><\/p>\n

Program Annotations. 22<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit 8 Zoom Support 22<\/a><\/p>\n

Inserting Tables Using the Keyboard. 22<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 Accessibility. 22<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Spell Checking, Autocorrection and Prediction. 22<\/a><\/p>\n

Office Adopts New Windows Display Technology. 23<\/a><\/p>\n

Ligatures, Clusters, Combining Marks and Variation Sequences. 23<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 Image Support 23<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 TOM Table Interfaces. 23<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 Preview.. 23<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Character Formatting. 24<\/a><\/p>\n

Math in Office Links. 24<\/a><\/p>\n

Keyboard Operator Shortcuts. 24<\/a><\/p>\n

Klinke\u2019s Streamlined Math Input Notation. 24<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Accents. 24<\/a><\/p>\n

Office Insert Symbol Dialog. 25<\/a><\/p>\n

Sans Serif Mathematical Symbols. 25<\/a><\/p>\n

Rendering MathML in HTML5. 25<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Keyboard Shortcuts. 25<\/a><\/p>\n

NINCH and EMU.. 25<\/a><\/p>\n

Two Math Typography Niceties. 26<\/a><\/p>\n

Equation Arrays. 26<\/a><\/p>\n

Plain Text Math in Bidirectional Contexts. 26<\/a><\/p>\n

Check out Live Writer 26<\/a><\/p>\n

MathML To-Do List 26<\/a><\/p>\n

Mac Word 2011 and Math. 27<\/a><\/p>\n

MathML 3.0. 27<\/a><\/p>\n

Nathan Myhrvold. 27<\/a><\/p>\n

Linear Format Notations for Mathematics. 27<\/a><\/p>\n

Which Languages a Font Supports. 27<\/a><\/p>\n

Article\/Video on Murray Sargent and Math in Office. 28<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Font Binding. 28<\/a><\/p>\n

Bidi Paragraph with Parenthesized Text 28<\/a><\/p>\n

Tailoring the Unicode Bidi Algorithm.. 28<\/a><\/p>\n

Linear Format Version 3. 28<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Ribbon Entry of Subscripts and Superscripts. 29<\/a><\/p>\n

Keyboard Entry of Subscripts and Superscripts. 29<\/a><\/p>\n

Negated Operators. 29<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Versions 1.0 through 3.0. 29<\/a><\/p>\n

Special Capabilities of a Math Font 29<\/a><\/p>\n

High Fonts and Math Fonts. 30<\/a><\/p>\n

Directionality in Math Zones. 30<\/a><\/p>\n

Equation Numbering Prototype. 30<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Friendly Name Hyperlinks. 30<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Versions Update to 7.0. 30<\/a><\/p>\n

Automatic RichEdit Hyperlinks. 31<\/a><\/p>\n

Entering Matrices. 31<\/a><\/p>\n

Math in Office 2010. 31<\/a><\/p>\n

WordPad Numbering Limit 31<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Handwriting Recognition. 31<\/a><\/p>\n

Entering Math via the Linear Format 32<\/a><\/p>\n

Empty Math Zone Place Holders. 32<\/a><\/p>\n

Restricted Math Zone Character Formatting. 32<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit Paragraph Indents. 32<\/a><\/p>\n

OMML Specification, Version 2. 32<\/a><\/p>\n

The Math Paragraph. 33<\/a><\/p>\n

Paragraphs and Paragraph Formatting. 33<\/a><\/p>\n

More on Math Context Menus. 33<\/a><\/p>\n

Default Document Math Properties. 33<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit\u2019s Nested Table Facility. 33<\/a><\/p>\n

The Invisibles. 34<\/a><\/p>\n

Improved MathML support in Word 2007. 34<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscript and Superscript Bases. 34<\/a><\/p>\n

Extracting OMML from Word 2003 Math Zone Images. 34<\/a><\/p>\n

Updated RTF Specification. 34<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Context Menus. 35<\/a><\/p>\n

A neat opportunity\u2026.. 35<\/a><\/p>\n

Word EQ Field and East Asian Formatting. 35<\/a><\/p>\n

Hidden Math Features in Word 2007. 35<\/a><\/p>\n

Weird F020-F0FF characters in Word\u2019s RTF. 35<\/a><\/p>\n

Rick Shoemaker, quantum magician and microcomputer whiz. 36<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of My Favorite Sayings. 36<\/a><\/p>\n

Smart Canvasses. 36<\/a><\/p>\n

STIX Beta Fonts. 36<\/a><\/p>\n

Using RichEdit 6.0 for Math. 36<\/a><\/p>\n

Using Left\/Right Arrow Keys in Mathematical Text 37<\/a><\/p>\n

Breaking Equations into Multiple Lines. 37<\/a><\/p>\n

Automatic arguments. 37<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Selection. 37<\/a><\/p>\n

Getting Word 2007 Technical Files into Publisher Pipelines. 37<\/a><\/p>\n

Science and Nature have difficulties with Word 2007 mathematics. 38<\/a><\/p>\n

Using Math Italic and Bold in Word 2007. 38<\/a><\/p>\n

When Formula Autobuildup Occurs. 38<\/a><\/p>\n

Creating Math Web Documents using Word 2007. 38<\/a><\/p>\n

Math Find\/Replace and Rich Text Searches. 38<\/a><\/p>\n

Cool Equation Number Macros for Word 2007. 39<\/a><\/p>\n

Converting Equations from MathType to Word 2007\u2019s Equation Format 39<\/a><\/p>\n

Office Math RTF and OMML Documentation. 39<\/a><\/p>\n

Saving Windows from the OS\/2 Bulldozer 39<\/a><\/p>\n

LineServices. 39<\/a><\/p>\n

User Spaces in Math Zones. 39<\/a><\/p>\n

Mathematical RTF. 40<\/a><\/p>\n

Some RichEdit History. 40<\/a><\/p>\n

RichEdit versions. 40<\/a><\/p>\n

MathML and Ecma Math (OMML) 40<\/a><\/p>\n

How I got into technical WP. 41<\/a><\/p>\n

High-Quality Editing and Display of Mathematical Text in Office 2007. 41<\/a><\/p>\n

Formula Autobuildup in Word 2007. 41<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Autocomplete<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Users of OfficeMath note that entering math symbols using a keyboard can be hard because they don’t know the symbol keywords to type and\/or the control words are long. To ease these problems, we create a math autocomplete listbox that displays the control words that match what the user types…<\/p>\n

June 14, 2019<\/p>\n

Math Zone Navigation<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post compares the math-zone edit navigation in Microsoft Office apps to the structured child\/parent\/next\/previous tree navigation provided by\u00a0MathPlayer<\/a>\u00a0and other systems. Combining both approaches results in rich navigation and editing experiences for blind and sighted users alike….<\/p>\n

April 30, 2019<\/p>\n

Using MathML-Based Speech to Edit Math in Different Math Models<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post discusses how an Assistive Technology program (AT) can use\u00a0Presentation MathML<\/a>\u00a0to create consistent speech for editing equations created with different math models, such as\u00a0OfficeMath<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0MathType<\/a>. A goal is to make the speech and editing experience be as similar as possible, even though the underlying math models differ in significant ways\u2026<\/p>\n

March 28, 2019<\/p>\n

Using Math Alphanumerics in Code and Web Pages<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The post\u00a0UTF-8 RTF<\/a>\u00a0shows how much easier it is to read the rich text format (RTF) with Unicode characters instead of the RTF \\uN<\/em>\u00a0notation. You see the real characters instead of signed 16-bit decimal numbers. The same readability improvement occurs in computer programs and web source\u2026<\/p>\n

February 27, 2019<\/p>\n

RichEdit 9 Additions<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Six years have passed since the post\u00a0RichEdit 8 Feature Additions<\/a>\u00a0and a lot has happened in between. Along the way, several versions have shipped, but we might as well call the current one RichEdit 9, This covers RichEdit up through Office 2019 and includes some features of more recent Office 365 versions.\u00a0….<\/p>\n

January 18, 2019<\/p>\n

RichEdit Property Sets<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

RichEdit has many character-format properties, most of which are documented for ITextFont2 and CHARFORMAT2. Nevertheless, the OpenType specification defines many more character-format properties called OpenType features consisting of a 32-bit identifier (id) and a 32-bit value. For example, the Gabriola font has stylistic set 6, which displays \u201cGabriola is graceful\u201d as Variable fonts are the\u2026<\/p>\n

December 22, 2018<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

UI Automation Math Text Support<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Microsoft products expose their contents for accessibility purposes via a set of interfaces known as UI Automation (UIA). Currently UIA has no special support for math text. Either the assistive technology program (AT) has to figure out if math is involved or the application has to return math-specific speech text as done with Office math\u2026<\/p>\n

November 16, 2018<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

OfficeMath UI<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The post OfficeMath describes the history, model, file format, typography and math font of the native math facility introduced in Office 2007. That post refers to the present post for discussion of OfficeMath user interfaces (UI). OfficeMath UI can be grouped into keyboard, menu\/ribbon, ink, and accessibility categories. Let\u2019s consider each of these in turn\u2026.<\/p>\n

October 17, 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

OfficeMath<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

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 hasn\u2019t had a recognizable name. \u201cMicrosoft Equation Editor\u201d (MEE) seems natural, but it\u2019s the name of the Design Science math editor that shipped\u2026<\/p>\n

September 30, 2018<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

Converting Microsoft Equation Editor Objects to OfficeMath<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

As discussed in the post Editing equations created using the Microsoft Equation Editor, the Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 (MEE) was removed from Office installations because it has security problems and no maintenance. Microsoft doesn\u2019t have access to the MEE source code and MEE\u2019s author, Design Science, doesn\u2019t maintain it, instead offering the more powerful, upward-compatible\u2026<\/p>\n

August 31, 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Integrands, Summands, and Math Function Arguments<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The Microsoft OfficeMath object model (OMML) dedicates explicit arguments for integrands, summands and other N-aryands, as well as for math functions such as trigonometric functions and subscript\/superscript bases. Having such arguments aids in calculating the correct math spacing and reveals the math content more precisely. However, other math models, such as LaTeX, Presentation MathML and\u2026<\/p>\n

July 31, 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Copying Equations from Wikipedia into Office Applications<\/h2>\n

The post LaTeX Math in Office describes how to switch between UnicodeMath and LaTeX in Office apps. One handy use of this facility is in copying equations from Wikipedia into a Word document. The process isn\u2019t as simple as selecting the equation, typing Ctrl+C to copy it and Ctrl+V to paste it into your document,\u2026<\/p>\n

June 19, 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Equation-Editor Office-Math Feature Comparison<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post compares the Design Science Equation Editor and MathType features with the Microsoft Office native math features (Office Math). Some comparison is given in the post Other Office Math Editing Facilities. Most math constructs are supported by all three environments. Notably missing in Office Math are long division and matrix row\/column lines. We start\u2026<\/p>\n

May 14, 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

OneNote Math Assistant<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

OneNote Universal has a nifty built-in math facility that lets you solve and graph equations. Enter an equation with pen or keyboard, click on the Insert tab and hit the Math icon. A math panel opens on the right-hand side displaying the equation along with a list box of options depending on the equation. One\u2026<\/p>\n

April 29, 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Representation of Math Accents<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The post Math Accents discusses how accent usage in math zones differs from that in ordinary text, notably in the occurrence of multicharacter bases. Even with single character bases, the accents may vary in width while in ordinary text the accent widths are the same for all letters. The present post continues the discussion by\u2026<\/p>\n

March 31, 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Animated GIFs<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The post RichEdit 8.0 Image Support describes how RichEdit supports popular image formats, such as jpeg\u2019s, png\u2019s and GIF\u2019s. RichEdit 8.1 added direct support for jpeg\u2019s and png\u2019s in the Rich Text Format (RTF) instead of using RichEdit\u2019s proprietary blob format. Even so, GIFs were treated as second-class images in two ways. First, they were\u2026<\/p>\n

February 21, 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Microsoft Word EQ Field<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Word\u2019s first math editing facility was the EQ field. Some description of the EQ field and comparison to the Equation Editor, MathType and native math zones is given in Other Office Math Editing Facilities. For mathematical purposes, the native equation facility built into Word and other Office apps is better than the EQ field as\u2026<\/p>\n

January 23, 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Clipped Text<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post describes three ways RichEdit may clip text along with possible solutions. Clipping can occur due to inadequate line height, lack of font vertical padding or insufficient painting of selected text. In some cases, improved rendering code could avoid clipping. Typographic compromises can avoid clipping in other cases. Selection clipping Acetate selection is discussed\u2026<\/p>\n

December 28, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Other Office Math Editing Facilities<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Many posts of this blog are about the native Office math facility introduced in Microsoft Word in 2007 and added to PowerPoint, OneNote, and in Excel Text Boxes in 2010. But the first native math-text facility in Microsoft Word was the EQ field, one of many fields, such as time and date. Design Science designed\u2026<\/p>\n

November 30, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Greek Letters<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Greek letters often appear as variables in mathematical text. This post describes their support in [La]TeX and Unicode and how their math usage sometimes differs from modern Greek text. For example, the upper-case upsilon looks like a Latin Y in modern Greek, but a curvy \u03a5 in math zones. Similarly, in math zones the two\u2026<\/p>\n

October 31, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Setting and Getting Math Speech, Braille, UnicodeMath, LaTeX\u2026<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post augments the post Inserting and Getting Math Text in RichEdit by documenting the RichEdit options for ITextRange2::SetText2(options, bstr) and ITextRange2::GetText2(options, pbstr) including those for math speech and math braille. As such, this post is for programmers. But more generally, it reveals that RichEdit supports Nemeth math braille (!). All options work in the\u2026<\/p>\n

September 28, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recognizing LaTeX Input in UnicodeMath Input Mode<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In offering a LaTeX math input mode, we\u2019ve run into the problem that a user might type some LaTeX while the UnicodeMath input mode is active and get something unintended and confusing. This post reveals ways in which the build-up engine can recognize this situation and maybe cue the user to switch to the LaTeX\u2026<\/p>\n

August 31, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

LaTeX Math in Office<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

For a while now it\u2019s been possible to switch Word\u2019s math input mode from UnicodeMath to LaTeX. We didn\u2019t advertise this highly requested feature since it needed more work. I wrote the original conversion routines back in Fall, 2007 and used them in preparing PowerPoint physics presentations since they\u2019re handy for copying equations from Wikipedia\u2026<\/p>\n

July 30, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Braille UI<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

For sighted users, Microsoft Office applications like Word, PowerPoint and OneNote have user interface (UI) cues that reveal math zones, selected text, the insertion point (IP) if no text is selected, and the argument of the innermost math object (fraction, subscript, integral, matrix, \u2026) that contains the IP. Math speech also reveals these properties. These\u2026<\/p>\n

June 21, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Math STIX Fonts 2.0 and UTR #25 Updates<\/h2>\n

Two math updates have happened: 1) the STIX math fonts have been upgraded to Version 2.0, which works well with Microsoft Word, and 2) Unicode Technical Report #25, Unicode Support Mathematics has been updated to include discussion of slashed-zero and empty-set variations. This post discusses these updates. STIX Fonts 2.0 We compare STIX 2 Math\u2026<\/p>\n

June 1, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Braille for Math Zones<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Mathematical text in modern technical documents appears in math zones. This is true for LaTeX, Microsoft Office math, MathType, Open Office, HTML5, etc. The main reason is that the typography of mathematical text differs from that for ordinary text (see, for example, User Spaces in Math Zones) and has special layout constructs such as square\u2026<\/p>\n

April 18, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Editing Math using MathML for Speech<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The posts Microsoft Office Math Speech and Speaking of math\u2026 describe two kinds of math-speech granularities: coarse-grained (navigate by words), which speaks math expressions fluently in a natural language, and fine-grained (navigate by characters), which reveals the content at the insertion point (IP) in sufficient detail to enable editing. Several Assistive Technologies (ATs) use MathML\u2026<\/p>\n

March 19, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Microsoft Office Math Speech<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Microsoft Office math-aware applications can now speak math in over 18 different languages! Try it out with native math zones in Word by enabling Narrator (type CapsLock + Enter) and navigate a math zone as described in the post Speaking of math\u2026 There are two math-speech granularities: coarse-grained (navigate by words), which speaks math expressions\u2026<\/p>\n

February 27, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unicode \u2013 Nemeth Character Mappings<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In addition to handling 2D arrangements such as fractions, root, subscripts and superscripts, math layout programs need to be able to display the myriad math symbols discussed in Unicode Technical Report #25 Unicode Support for Mathematics. To interoperate with Nemeth braille, such programs need to map between Unicode characters and Nemeth braille sequences. Since Unicode\u2026<\/p>\n

January 31, 2017<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Text Insertion Point<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

People often ask questions about the nature of the text insertion point (IP), the blinking vertical bar in between two characters on screen. This post attempts to address some of these questions, notably about where the IP is, what it means, how it works in BiDi text, how to control it programmatically and how it\u2026<\/p>\n

December 28, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

UnicodeMath Version 3.1<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

A new version of Unicode Technical Note #28, UnicodeMath, a Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics is now available. It updates several topics and references and uses the name UnicodeMath instead of Unicode linear format. Since there are several math linear formats, such as Nemeth braille, [La]TeX, and AsciiMath, having the name UnicodeMath clarifies the\u2026<\/p>\n

November 30, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Speaking Subscripts, Superscripts, and Fractions<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

You might think that there\u2019s just one good way to speak a math expression, at least in each natural language. But actually, there are a number of good ways to speak math expressions, each with advantages and disadvantages. This post discusses some of these choices for subscripts, superscripts, and fractions. The post Speaking of math\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

October 30, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

UnicodeMath<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In writing the post Nemeth Braille\u2014the first math linear format, I became increasingly aware that the Unicode Nearly Plain Text Encoding of Mathematics needed a better name than \u201clinear format\u201d. In addition to the Nemeth braille linear format, there are other math linear formats some of which are described in the post Linear Format Notations\u2026<\/p>\n

September 7, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nemeth Braille Alphanumerics and Unicode Math Alphanumerics<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Both Unicode and Nemeth braille include sets of math alphanumerics. Section 2.2 of Unicode Technical Report #25 discusses the math alphanumerics and why they\u2019re important for math. Microsoft Office math zones use math alphabetics for most variables and support the math digit sets as well. Accordingly, we need mappings between Unicode and Nemeth braille math alphanumerics\u2026.<\/p>\n

August 26, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nemeth Braille\u2014the first math linear format<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The 6-dot Nemeth braille encoding was created by Abraham Nemeth for mathematical and scientific notation and is general enough to encode almost all of the Microsoft Office math notation. He started working on his encoding in 1946 and it was first published in 1952 by the American Printing House for the Blind. It\u2019s a little\u2026<\/p>\n

July 31, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Speaking of math\u2026<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post discusses how a combination of the Office in-memory built-up format (\u201cProfessional\u201d in Word) and UnicodeMath is ideal for generating speech for math zones. Neither format was designed with speech in mind. The built-up format was designed to aid the creation of beautiful math typography. UnicodeMath was designed to aid math keyboard input by\u2026<\/p>\n

June 30, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Text Pointers<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

A text editor has to provide ways of reading and modifying text. For external clients, the RichEdit editor provides the Text Object Model (TOM) interfaces including ITextRange[2] and ITextSelection[2].These interfaces are quite efficient, since they are lightweight wrappers around the internal editing machinery. This post describes how RichEdit\u2019s design came to be and notes a\u2026<\/p>\n

May 31, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Accessibility Trees<\/a><\/h2>\n

This updated post discusses some aspects of making mathematical equations accessible to blind people. Equations that are simple typographically, such as \ud835\udc38 = \ud835\udc5a\ud835\udc50\u00b2, are accessible with the use of standard left and right arrow key navigation and with each variable and two-dimensional construct being spoken when the insertion point is moved to them. At\u2026<\/p>\n

March 29, 2021<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Font Binding Refinement<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

As discussed in the post RichEdit Font Binding, in a text string when a character appears that isn\u2019t supported by the current font, an appropriate font needs to be used. There are a number of pitfalls in making such font choices. For example, the post Math Font Binding discusses special requirements for font binding in\u2026<\/p>\n

March 28, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unicode Math Calligraphic Alphabets<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Unicode needs a way to encode bold and regular math Calligraphic\/Chancery alphabets as well as bold and regular script alphabets, since it turns out that Calligraphic and Script alphabets are used contrastively by some authors and [La]TeX has had both kinds of letters. In most documents, Script and Calligraphic shapes can be substituted for one\u2026<\/p>\n

February 5, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wingdings with Cyrillic, Greek, etc., Characters<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post describes some seemingly anomalous behavior that can happen when you type characters that have Unicode code points above U+00FF, such as Cyrillic and Greek characters, while a SYMBOL_CHARSET font like Wingdings is active. By definition such fonts are not Unicode fonts and don\u2019t have characters with code points above 255 (0xFF in hexadecimal)\u2026.<\/p>\n

January 4, 2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Font Binding<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The post RichEdit Font Binding outlines how RichEdit chooses fonts when you paste or otherwise enter plain text into a RichEdit control. But it doesn\u2019t describe how math font binding differs from natural-language font binding. The differences are due to 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Math styles like math italic, bold, script, Fraktur and double-struck are obtained by character\u2026<\/p>\n

December 7, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Inserting and Getting Math Text in RichEdit<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Starting with the Office 2007 RichEdit, it has been possible to enter math using the keyboard and to read and write RTF files that contain math zones. The RichEdit Text Object Model (TOM) ITextRange2 interface has methods to handle math programmatically, such as ITextRange2::BuildUpMath() and ITextRange2::SetInlineObject() and GetInlineObject(). But the methods don\u2019t offer convenient ways\u2026<\/p>\n

November 22, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Language Tag Handling<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

For years, many applications have used the locale ID (LCID) to identify the language and locale for text and other data. For example since 1997 (RichEdit 2.0), RichEdit\u2019s character formatting has included CHARFORMAT2::lcid. The LCID can, in fact, describe the vast majority of language\/locale combinations in use as far as text is concerned. However the\u2026<\/p>\n

October 19, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Color Fonts<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The popularity of emoji symbols has encouraged a variety of technological innovations, notably fonts with multicolor characters. This is different from just having a text color, which is described in RichEdit Colors. While some colored glyphs were part of the original Japanese emoji standards, colored glyphs got much more elegant when Apple introduced its proprietary\u2026<\/p>\n

September 24, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Single Line RichEdit Performance Runs<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In applications that have lots of independent text instances such as spreadsheets and complex dialogs, one wants to know the tradeoffs between rapid display, memory usage, and editing functionality. As noted in the post Flyweight RichEdit Controls, using RichEdit to display such text avoids display glitches in switching from static display to edit mode and\u2026<\/p>\n

August 30, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Input APIs<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

With on-screen keyboards used commonly on phones, tablets and even on laptops, one might wonder how such keyboards can input characters and commands into a RichEdit control. With traditional hardware keyboards, messages like WM_CHAR, WM_KEYDOWN, and WM_SYSKEYDOWN offer a wide variety of input data. But the new touch-screen keyboards typically don\u2019t use messages. This post\u2026<\/p>\n

July 6, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Autolink Color Contrast<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Typical documents use black for the text color and white for the background. This gives the highest contrast. Hyperlinks are often displayed in blue, which gives good contrast on a white background. But other combinations of colors may not be so easily distinguishable. This post describes how RichEdit handles such combinations and muses about possible\u2026<\/p>\n

June 8, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Equation Numbering in Office 2016<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Word 2016 and PowerPoint 2016 join OneNote 2010 (and later) in offering a way to display equation numbers flushed to the right margin. To enter an equation number using the linear format (see Section 3.21), type the equation followed by a # (U+0023) followed by the desired equation number text and hit Enter. For example,\u2026<\/p>\n

May 14, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hot Keys and altGr<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The earlier post, RichEdit Hot Keys, lists all built-in RichEdit hot keys. In particular, it lists a popular hot key for typing the Euro (\u20ac), ctrl+alt+e, which works for some languages, such as US English. A problem may arise when altGr+e is assigned to some other character, such as \u00e9 in Spanish keyboards. This is\u2026<\/p>\n

April 20, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Colors<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Occasionally people ask how foreground (text) and background colors work in RichEdit. This post gives an overview of RichEdit colors in a variety of scenarios including default coloring, formatted coloring, selection coloring (both normal and acetate), math-zone highlighting and special draft and high-contrast modes. It also describes refinements such as switching to XOR coloring when\u2026<\/p>\n

March 27, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Language Tag<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

To guide proofing tools to use the correct dictionaries and autocorrect lists as well as to display preferred glyphs, it\u2019s very handy to associate language tags with text runs. For many years, Windows has provided a language tag property called the LCID (locale identifier) consisting of a 32-bit unsigned integer. The LCID suffices for many\u2026<\/p>\n

February 14, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Two Phonetic Scripts: Vietnamese and Korean<\/h2>\n

I just visited two very interesting countries, Vietnam and Korea. Being actively involved in writing software (mostly RichEdit) for editing the world\u2019s 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: enable the languages to be read\u2026<\/p>\n

January 27, 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ruby Text Objects<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Chinese characters are used to represent syllables and words in a number of East Asian languages. In each language, the characters are pronounced differently and their meanings may differ as well. To help clarify the pronunciation and\/or semantics, \u201cruby text\u201d can be used. In vertical text layout, ruby text is positioned vertically to the right\u2026<\/p>\n

December 27, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Symbol Hierarchy<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The Unicode Standard 7.0 has 2311 math symbols not including the ASCII letters and the standard combining marks like tilde, which are also used in math zones. Such a large number of symbols can be confusing if not intimidating to people who don\u2019t use mathematics professionally. Even those who use math a lot don\u2019t use\u2026<\/p>\n

November 26, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Smart Lighting<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post involves an old passion of mine, computerizing homes. First some background. I spent the academic year 1975-76 on sabbatical at the Max Planck Institute for Solid-State Physics and the University of Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany researching nonlinear laser spectroscopy theory, generally of atomic media. But the Max Planck Institute aroused my curiosity about\u2026<\/p>\n

October 21, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Entering Unicode Characters<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

As noted in the post Symbols and Emoji we have the ability to input characters in much more powerful ways than possible before the advent of modern computers and smart phones. We can insert symbols chosen from large galleries (Character Map, Office Insert Symbol Dialog, Office math ribbon, soft keyboards) to represent words and ideas\u2026.<\/p>\n

September 30, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Symbols and Emoji<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The emoji symbols (literally picture characters) introduced by Japanese cell phone carriers have captured the imaginations of computer users around the world. So much so that occasionally many symbols created long before the emoji are now being treated as emoji. This post addresses the history of symbols in general and how emoji symbols fit in\u2026<\/p>\n

August 31, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Plain-Text Controls<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

A Unicode plain-text editor appears to have a single set of character formatting properties for the entire text and a single set of paragraph formatting properties. With NotePad, for example, you can choose a normal, bold, italic, or bold-italic font of any reasonable size and your choice is used consistently throughout the text (at least\u2026<\/p>\n

July 21, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Greek Letter Bug Fixed<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

When Word 2007 and later versions write an RTF file that includes math alphanumeric symbols (see U+1D400..U+1D7FF), they convert the symbols back to ASCII or Greek in the BMP (basic multilingual plane) and then write the characters out using the appropriate charset, namely ANSI_CHARSET for Latin letters like a..z, and GREEK_CHARSET for Greek letters. In\u2026<\/p>\n

June 26, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Crisp Text Display<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Kaspar commented on my post Office Adopts New Windows Display Technology \u201cI always wondered why the text in OneNote 2013 looks so much better than Word 2013.\u201d Curious, I typed some math into Word and OneNote on my 3200 x 1800 resolution Samsung ATIV laptop and compared them. The two displays looked pretty similar! For\u2026<\/p>\n

May 31, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

OpenType Math Tables<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The math tables created for the math facility in Word 2007 and other Microsoft Office applications are now officially part of the OpenType standard ISO\/IEC CD 14496-22 3rd edition. See Section 6.3.6 MATH. You can download a copy of the whole standard from here. We always hoped that the tables would become part of the official\u2026<\/p>\n

April 27, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BiDi Hyperlinks<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

More precisely, this post is about BiDi Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs). These objects are a generalization of Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) that can contain a large variety of nonASCII characters, such as most alphabetic characters and Chinese characters. Complications occur when BiDi characters such as Arabic and Hebrew are used in IRIs especially when displayed\u2026<\/p>\n

March 30, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

More on Equation Numbering<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The book Creating Research and Scientific Documents using Microsoft Word gives a method for numbering equations that works with all versions of Word from Word 2007 on and has automatic renumbering of the equations and the references to the equations. Those are very attractive features. The approach inserts a center tab before the equation and\u2026<\/p>\n

February 21, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Book on Technical Writing in Word<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

There\u2019s a new Microsoft Press book on creating technical documents in Word, entitled Creating Research and Scientific Documents using Microsoft Word<\/em>. Alexander Mamishev, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, is the primary author and I wrote most of Chapter 6 on equations. The book emphasizes the utility of Word templates in streamlining\u2026<\/p>\n

January 15, 2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

UTF-8 RTF<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

For RichEdit 4.0 (Windows XP SP1), I developed a UTF-8 version of the Rich Text Format (RTF). The reason was to have a faster, more reliable way of handling copy\/paste for RichEdit than regular RTF. RichEdit 5.0 added the binary format for this purpose (and for OneNote) and RichEdit 6.0 added a still faster internal\u2026<\/p>\n

November 20, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Hot Keys<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post summarizes the hot keys built into RichEdit. Previous posts have described various math hot keys like Alt+=. But AFAIK no one has published a summary of all the RichEdit hot keys. Note that RichEdit clients, e.g., OneNote, often handle all hot key combinations with RichEdit never seeing the corresponding keyboard messages. Since the\u2026<\/p>\n

October 30, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit 8 Feature Additions<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The time has come to summarize the features added in RichEdit 8, which shipped with Windows 8 and Office 2013. Since so much was added, I wrote a number of blog posts over the last twelve months about the larger RichEdit 8 features. The present post lists those features and then describes some smaller features\u2026<\/p>\n

September 7, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emoji<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Early in this century with texting becoming an increasingly popular way to communicate on cell phones, the Japanese created an imaginative new way of conveying an idea or emotion: use cool, maybe colorful, maybe animated, symbols called emoji. Some emoji resembled symbols that were already encoded in Unicode, but most were new. Examples include \u201cred\u2026<\/p>\n

August 23, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Flyweight RichEdit Controls<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Back when RichEdit 2.0 was being designed, Christian Fortini had a dream that every text string in a Forms^3 form or dialog would be a light-weight RichEdit control. That way there would be no display glitches in switching from static display to edit mode and text could be copied, edited, and made accessible. To keep\u2026<\/p>\n

July 25, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Arabic and Mathematical Enclosures<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post describes the Arabic subtending marks and discusses how their editing and display could be significantly improved by using a mathematical layout engine instead of using a complex-script shaping engine. Unicode has a set of six Arabic subtending or enclosure characters located at U+0600..U+0604 (\u0600, \u0601, \u0602, \u0603, \u0604, respectively) and the End-of-Ayah mark U+06DD (\u06dd)\u2026.<\/p>\n

June 30, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MathML on the Windows Clipboard<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Sometimes people enquire how the Windows clipboard works and whether it supports MathML, jpeg, RTF and other formats in addition to built-in formats like CF_BITMAP and CF_UNICODETEXT that are defined in winuser.h. The answer to the second question is that Windows supports any format that you want to define, including private formats. This post gives\u2026<\/p>\n

May 27, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pasting Bitmaps into Text<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In the (almost) old days, when you paste a bitmap into a rich-text editor, the editor would give it to OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) to figure out what to do with it. But these days, OLE isn\u2019t always available, so it\u2019s more general to paste them using the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) mentioned in\u2026<\/p>\n

April 29, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Alpha Channel<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

One of our testers inserted a Microsoft logo image into RichEdit and saw an inky black rectangle. Ignoring any connotation that this might be a bad omen (!), I proceeded to study image formats in Wikipedia and in MSDN. (Not that I hadn\u2019t already scoured such documentation). Pretty soon I started to suspect that the image, which\u2026<\/p>\n

March 16, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit 8 Performance Improvements<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post describes a couple of performance improvements introduced in RichEdit 8: 1) a more efficient display tree, and 2) a faster rich-text formatting mechanism. Performance is always of interest, partly to make the user experience more enjoyable (animations should be smooth, not jerky, and who wants to wait for things to happen?) and partly\u2026<\/p>\n

February 22, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>A Math Build-up Bug<\/h2>\n

I didn\u2019t think we had any serious math build-up bugs thanks to very extensive testing, but there was at least one bug anyhow. (If you find such bugs, please let me know by email or as a comment on a post). This one was quite simple and it existed in both Office 2010 and 2013\u2026.<\/p>\n

February 18, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 Touch Support<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Windows 8 introduced substantially better touch facilities than those available in Windows 7.\u00a0 One cool thing is the new touch on-screen keyboard, which is enabled if you have a touch screen. To see it, swipe in from the right side, touch the cog icon for settings, touch the Keyboard, and then touch \u201cTouch keyboard and\u2026<\/p>\n

January 29, 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Program Annotations<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Notation is a favorite topic of mine being at least partly inspired by Bertrand Russell, who once wrote, \u201cA good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it seem almost like a live teacher\u2026and a perfect notation would be a substitute for thought.\u201d An earlier post on notation deals with the linear\u2026<\/p>\n

December 31, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit 8 Zoom Support<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In this day and age with touch pinch and expand zooming of screens, zoom is everywhere! So you might wonder how to zoom the contents of a RichEdit control. There are two ways: 1) maintaining the display width and rewrapping the text as necessary to fill the client rectangle, and 2) zooming everything including the\u2026<\/p>\n

November 16, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Inserting Tables Using the Keyboard<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post describes a little trick that lets you insert a table into RichEdit and into Word just using the keyboard. Admittedly in Word, you can use the handy table tool on the Insert tab with a mouse or with a keyboard. But in WordPad and the Windows RT RichEditBox, you don\u2019t have a table\u2026<\/p>\n

October 12, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 Accessibility<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

An important part of a computer\u2019s user interface is to provide for user interaction alternatives to the usual sight-oriented methods. Such capability requires programmatic access to what\u2019s on the screen so that screen reader programs can express the content using voice or other means. Microsoft UI Automation (UIA) provides such access. A valuable side benefit\u2026<\/p>\n

September 14, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Spell Checking, Autocorrection and Prediction<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

RichEdit has provided support for client spell checking (TOM object model and temporary character formatting\u2014see tomApplyTmp) and autocorrect (see EM_SETAUTOCORRECTPROC) for many years. But it has been the RichEdit client\u2019s responsibility to access the spell-checking and autocorrection components, except for the built-in math autocorrect option. For clients like OneNote and Outlook, such a responsibility is\u2026<\/p>\n

August 31, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Office Adopts New Windows Display Technology<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Office 2013 has undergone a substantial shift to a relatively new display facility, Direct2D, and a new text facility, DirectWrite. These are the display facilities that are used on Windows Phone 8, the new Windows RT slates, and optionally on Windows 7 & 8. Up through Office 2010, the Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) and\u2026<\/p>\n

July 29, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ligatures, Clusters, Combining Marks and Variation Sequences<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

On the surface, Unicode appears to be a just large collection of characters. But before Unicode text is displayed, substantial \u201cshaping\u201d can occur. This shaping is the process of mapping the Unicode characters to glyphs and placing them correctly on the display. The mapping is, in general, n characters to m glyphs. For most characters\u2026<\/p>\n

June 29, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 Image Support<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Up until RichEdit 8.0, RichEdit\u2019s native image support was limited to metafiles, enhanced metafiles, and simple images like bitmaps (bmp\u2019s). If OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) had supported other types, such as jpg\u2019s, png\u2019s and gif\u2019s, RichEdit would have supported them automatically. But OLE\u2019s functionality was frozen years ago. RichEdit 5.0 added \u201cblobs\u201d, which are\u2026<\/p>\n

May 25, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 TOM Table Interfaces<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

An earlier post describes the RichEdit nested table facility and how the EM_INSERTTABLE and EM_GETTABLEPARMS messages could be used to insert and examine tables. Now those messages are documented in MSDN along with a new message, EM_SETTABLEPARMS that allows one to modify tables. For additional convenience, RichEdit 8.0 adds table support to the TOM text\u2026<\/p>\n

April 22, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit 8.0 Preview<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of buzz about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and it is really exciting. One particularly exciting thing missing in the buzz is that Windows 8 contains a new RichEdit! Since the new version is now publicly documented on MSDN, I can write about it. I found the public documentation by Binging\u2026<\/p>\n

March 3, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Character Formatting<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

RichEdit\u2019s name derives from its ability to represent rich text. Such text is comprised of text runs with different sets of character and paragraph formatting properties along with embedded objects, such as images. Some discussion of paragraph formatting is given in an earlier post. The present post discusses how character formatting is represented in RichEdit\u2026<\/p>\n

February 8, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math in Office Links<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

I started this blog in 2006 and now it\u2019s 2012. How time flies! This post provides links relevant to the main theme of the blog, math editing and display in Microsoft Office grouped according to area, such as keyboard, formatting, background, \u2026<\/p>\n

January 9, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Keyboard Operator Shortcuts<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The previous post introduces Hermann Klinke\u2019s math input notation, which he developed to speed up entry of equations for real-time note taking in OneNote. The post is followed by a very interesting set of comments comparing high-speed, and yet easy-to-remember, input sequences. Some of these involve hot keys and some can be done with math\u2026<\/p>\n

December 2, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Klinke\u2019s Streamlined Math Input Notation<\/h2>\n

Hermann Klinke has designed and instrumented an input notation on top of the Microsoft Office math facility that you may want to try. It significantly reduces the number of keystrokes needed to input mathematical text. His motivation is to have a way to enter equations in real time while taking lecture notes. He has documentation\u2026<\/p>\n

November 20, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Accents<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Accents are quite common in mathematical text. For example, in physics one uses one- to four-dot accents to designate the first through fourth time derivatives, respectively. Primes are often used on integration variables. Transforms can be designated by tildes and averages by overlines. While accents are usually applied to a single base character, they can\u2026<\/p>\n

October 30, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Office Insert Symbol Dialog<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This blog post describes a cool insert-symbol facility built into Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. The facility is handy for locating mathematical symbols as well as other characters. And with the developments in Unicode these days, that means a lot of symbols! Recently the Unicode Technical Committee and the ISO WG2 Committee\u2026<\/p>\n

September 29, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sans Serif Mathematical Symbols<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Most mathematical documents and books use fonts with serifs, such as Times Roman. However mathematical expressions can also be displayed with sans-serif letters, such as the font this post uses. In fact, sans-serif letters are used sufficiently often in mathematical typography that six sets of them are included in the Unicode Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols. Further rationale\u2026<\/p>\n

August 29, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rendering MathML in HTML5<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

As you can see in this document, Presentation MathML is part of HTML5. This is very exciting, since HTML5 is becoming the primary new web standard format. You might think that this would automatically make it easy to render MathML in a browser. In fact, FireFox does a decent job of rendering MathML, having incorporated\u2026<\/p>\n

July 31, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Keyboard Shortcuts<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Nali commented on the post Office 2007 Math Editing\/Display that it would be nice to have keyboard hot keys to switch between Professional and Linear format (build up\/down), and between Display and Inline mode of equations. This is a great idea especially for those of us who like to use keyboards to speed up math\u2026<\/p>\n

June 21, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NINCH and EMU<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

People have been asking about a couple of acronyms fairly often these days, so here\u2019s a blog post on them. They are described on the web already if you type the right queries, but a little more motivation might be useful. The acronyms are NINCH for \u201cno input no change\u201d and EMU for \u201cEnglish Metric\u2026<\/p>\n

May 7, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two Math Typography Niceties<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Roughly eight years ago, some colleagues and I had the good fortune to spend an extraordinary afternoon with Donald Knuth, the primary author of TeX, at his home on the Stanford University campus. Among many things, Donald showed us how he uses TeX to typeset his computer-science papers and books exactly the way he wants\u2026<\/p>\n

April 30, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Equation Arrays<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

One user (Leperkawn) commented \u201cThere is basically no documentation on the \\eqarray command so I\u2019ll post a quick example that I had to figure out from trial and error.\u201d Before looking at his interesting example, here\u2019s the text in Section 3.19 of the linear format paper describing how to type in equation arrays: To align\u2026<\/p>\n

March 30, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Plain Text Math in Bidirectional Contexts<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In plain text, bidirectional text (text including some Arabic or Hebrew) is generally displayed according to the Unicode Bidi Algorithm (UBA). Since we\u2019re interested in math, it\u2019s pertinent to study a bit how simple mathematical expressions appear according to the UBA. Ideally math is displayed using higher-order protocols that overrule the UBA appropriately, but in\u2026<\/p>\n

February 28, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Check out Live Writer<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This is a test to see how I can use Live Writer to make blog posts more nicely. In particular, it\u2019s desirable to display equations by copying them from Word. For example, this is the mode locking formula which you can enter by typing \\integral<space> in a math zone. In PowerPoint 2010, it builds up\u2026<\/p>\n

January 1, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MathML To-Do List<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In my MathML 3.0 post, I noted that several things were postponed for future consideration. The present post lists math document properties and equation numbers. Other members of the MathML Working Group can undoubtedly add to the list. Default Document Math Properties A number of math display properties have document defaults. They are the ones\u2026<\/p>\n

December 31, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mac Word 2011 and Math<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Office for Mac 2011 has many cool additions. The best of them all (well you know my bias!) is that Mac Word 2011 has the elegant Office math editing and display facility! Although I do not own a Mac, my next-door neighbor Dylan Tom does and we gave the math facility a check out run\u2026.<\/p>\n

November 22, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>MathML 3.0<\/h2>\n

The W3C announced October 21, 2010 that the MathML 3.0 specification is a W3C Recommendation. This post describes some of the features added to MathML in version 3.0. The specification also includes numerous clarifications that are helpful for people wanting to implement MathML 3.0. The specification\u2019s introductory section \u201cStatus of this Document\u201d concludes with a\u2026<\/p>\n

October 28, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Nathan Myhrvold<\/h2>\n

This is a post about some of the early days in the life of an amazing person, Nathan Myhrvold. Nathan and his good friend and colleague, Chuck Whitmer, had completed PhD\u2019s in theoretical physics at Princeton. They wanted to investigate advanced behaviors in a field called deterministic chaos. This field deals with how dynamical systems\u2026<\/p>\n

September 28, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Linear Format Notations for Mathematics<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

I have been having a great discussion with Christian Lerch about computer-oriented mathematical notations. He has a program that lets you input MathML using a pure ASCII syntax. It is similar to ASCIIMathML. A lightly commented EBNF grammar of his MathEL language as implemented for the time being (still beta and evolving a bit) is\u2026<\/p>\n

August 30, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Which Languages a Font Supports<\/h2>\n

A recent post describes how RichEdit chooses default fonts for Unicode characters. The method assigns a character repertoire (CharRep) to each character and queries fonts to find out which CharRep\u2019s they support. If the current font doesn\u2019t support the CharRep for a character, RichEdit chooses a font that does. A variety of heuristics are used\u2026<\/p>\n

July 27, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Article\/Video on Murray Sargent and Math in Office<\/h2>\n

The article Professor\u2019s Laser Focus Gets Math into Office tells some of the story behind the Math in Office project. It also gives a link to a video that includes a sequence of me showing how easy it is to type in the binomial theorem. Hope you like it J<\/p>\n

June 17, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>RichEdit Font Binding<\/h2>\n

Suppose a user pastes some plain text into a document. In principle, that text can contain any Unicode character. That includes virtually all characters used in the current languages of the world along with many from ancient scripts and a plethora of symbols, mathematical and otherwise, that don\u2019t belong to any language in particular. The\u2026<\/p>\n

June 9, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bidi Paragraph with Parenthesized Text<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The previous post described four tailorings of the Unicode Bidi Algorithm (UBA) in situations where the UBA display is confusing or even misleading. The present post adds another set of scenarios to this list, namely strange renderings of paragraphs that contain parenthesized or quoted text. An algorithm for displaying such text in a reasonable way\u2026<\/p>\n

May 6, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tailoring the Unicode Bidi Algorithm<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The Unicode Bidi Algorithm is a very useful, general, and standard approach for displaying text that contains right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew. But there are situations in which it is awkward to use and\/or is visually confusing. This post considers three such situations: math zones, International Resource Identifiers (IRIs), and HTML spans with\u2026<\/p>\n

April 6, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Linear Format Version 3<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics, Version 3 (Unicode Technical Note #28) is now posted. The differences between Version 1 and 2 of that paper are largely cosmetic, but there were enough changes in Version 2 to merit a new number. Version 2 is mostly implemented in Microsoft Word 2007, where it is referred to\u2026<\/p>\n

March 13, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Ribbon Entry of Subscripts and Superscripts<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

As noted in the previous post Keyboard Entry of Subscripts and Superscripts, the preferred way to enter subscripts and superscripts is by using the keyboard, rather than the math ribbon. For example, type alt+= to insert a math zone followed by a^2+b^2=c^2<space> to enter the Pythagorean Theorem. This method is a lot faster than clicking\u2026<\/p>\n

March 3, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Keyboard Entry of Subscripts and Superscripts<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The Send-a-Smile and Send-a-Frown feedback from Office beta users is very useful for finding out where we\u2019ve done right and wrong things with the new Office. From time to time I\u2019ll post thoughts on some of the feedback that pertains to the math facility. The present post discusses the hot keys for entering subscripts and\u2026<\/p>\n

February 8, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Negated Operators<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Sometimes you need to enter a negated operator like \u2260. If you\u2019re a C\/C++ programmer, you might think that != should map to \u2260, since that\u2019s what != means in those languages (and some others). But since in mathematics ! means factorial, this choice is a bad idea for inputting \u2260 into mathematical text. You\u2026<\/p>\n

February 5, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>RichEdit Versions 1.0 through 3.0<\/h2>\n

Digging through old doc files, I ran across the following summary of RichEdit up through Version 3.0. It\u2019s more detailed than my post on RichEdit Versions, so it might be of interest to history buffs, anyhow. And it does describe the riched20.dll that still ships with Windows, mostly for purposes of backward compatibility. I wrote\u2026<\/p>\n

January 12, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Special Capabilities of a Math Font<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

A fairly common inquiry is how a program can use and access the many special glyph variants of a math font. It\u2019s clearly a much more intricate interaction than encountered in most text applications. This post outlines how the Office math layout software interacts with the Cambria Math font and, in principle, with any other\u2026<\/p>\n

January 11, 2010<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

High Fonts and Math Fonts<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Math fonts differ from other fonts not only in their extensive coverage of math operators, symbols, and math alphanumerics, but also in the large number of glyph variants they have to support two sizes of sub\/superscripts and many sizes of stretchable characters like parentheses and brackets. Some such glyphs can be many times as high\u2026<\/p>\n

December 1, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Directionality in Math Zones<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In most places, mathematical text is written \u201cleft to right\u201d (LTR). For example, in the expression x + y the plus is displayed to the right of the x and the y is displayed to the right of the plus. But in some Arabic locales, mathematical text is written right to left (RTL). Instead of\u2026<\/p>\n

November 12, 2009\ue111<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Equation Numbering Prototype<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

When writing the Math in Office 2010 post back in July, I could just imagine the disappointment various people would have when they discovered no mention of equation numbering. After getting math into PowerPoint, equation numbering had been the most often requested feature. Since PowerPoint 2010 now has the math facility, equation numbering has risen\u2026<\/p>\n

October 14, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Friendly Name Hyperlinks<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post is a companion to Automatic RichEdit Hyperlinks. As stated in that post, RichEdit has two kinds of hyperlinks, automatic hyperlinks (autoURLs) and friendly name hyperlinks. A friendly name hyperlink has a name, which is displayed, and a hidden instruction part that contains the actual URL. Such hyperlinks are commonly used when an author\u2026<\/p>\n

September 24, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Versions Update to 7.0<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The original RichEdit Versions post covered RichEdit versions 1.0 through 6.0, since 6.0 was the latest version at the time. RichEdit 7.0 will ship with Office 2010, so here\u2019s an update describing what that version adds. Most additions involve math editing\/display and play a central role in the math features of OneNote 2010, PowerPoint 2010,\u2026<\/p>\n

September 5, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Automatic RichEdit Hyperlinks<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

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 actual URL. The present\u2026<\/p>\n

August 31, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Entering Matrices<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The Office math ribbon has a few examples of matrices, but you might like to be able to enter a lot more kinds of matrices and enter them substantially faster. For this you can use the linear format (see Sec. 3.9). For example, a 2\u00d72 matrix is entered by \\matrix(\u2026&\u2026@\u2026&\u2026), where the ellipses are the\u2026<\/p>\n

August 18, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math in Office 2010<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Imagine typing alt+= in PowerPoint, OneNote, Excel, and, of course, Word and Outlook to enter a math zone and then type a^2+b^2=c^2<space> to see the Pythagorean theorem beautifully typeset on your screen! Or some way more complicated equation, equally beautifully typeset. You don\u2019t have to wait much longer as the people getting the Office 2010\u2026<\/p>\n

July 13, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>WordPad Numbering Limit<\/h2>\n

In Windows 7, WordPad has undergone many improvements even though it uses RichEdit 4.1+ for editing and display. Time and time again, the excellent Hyderabad team responsible for enhancing the Windows 7 WordPad requested very reasonable extensions to RichEdit 4.1, extensions that have been included in later versions of RichEdit. They\u2019ve also requested features that\u2026<\/p>\n

June 19, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Handwriting Recognition<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Starting with Windows 7, Windows includes a cool applet called the Math Input Panel. This applet lets you enter mathematical text using a pen or a mouse. It recognizes what you enter and displays the result using a special private version of RichEdit 6. It also lets you copy the results to Word, Mathematica, or any\u2026<\/p>\n

May 6, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Entering Math via the Linear Format<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The previous blog post is on the cool math handwriting recognition shipped with Windows 7. The post includes a description of a race I had entering equations using the linear format with formula autobuildup against a member of the math handwriting recognition team, who entered equations using the Windows 7 Math Input Panel. Since the\u2026<\/p>\n

May 6, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Empty Math Zone Place Holders<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

You type Alt+= or click the Insert ribbon Equation button, and presto! You\u2019ve inserted an empty math zone place holder that states \u201cType equation here.\u201d in the language you\u2019re using. Then you type a^2+b^2<space> and you see a2+b2, except in better typography. The empty math zone place holder seems simple and intuitive, but behind the\u2026<\/p>\n

April 27, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Restricted Math Zone Character Formatting<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

A number of character formatting properties are treated differently in a math zone than they are in ordinary text. These include underline, strikeout, math font face and size, subscript and superscript. This post discusses how these properties differ in math zones, sometimes to the surprise of users. For starters, the ordinary subscript and superscript attributes\u2026<\/p>\n

March 4, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit Paragraph Indents<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

RichEdit paragraph indents are based on the original RichEdit 1.0 definitions. These differ somewhat from Microsoft Word\u2019s definitions and hence from TOM\u2019s (RichEdit\u2019s Text Object Model), which were developed in collaboration with the Word team.\u00a0 In addition, the RTF file format uses Word\u2019s definitions, naturally. RichEdit\u2019s paragraph indents can be set using the EM_SETPARAFORMAT message\u2026<\/p>\n

February 16, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

OMML Specification, Version 2<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The OMML (Office math markup language) specification has been improved in response to the great feedback we received from the ISO reviews. It\u2019s part of the full OpenXML documentation Version 2 and is very handy to have if you\u2019re working with OMML. The full OpenXML documentation itself is also very useful if you\u2019re working more generally with\u2026<\/p>\n

January 16, 2009<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Math Paragraph<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The earlier post Breaking Equations into Multiple Lines describes equation line breaking and alignment. In particular, long equations often do not fit on a single line and need to be broken up for display on multiple lines. Word 2007 offers two approaches: automatic and manual line breaking. A related feature is alignment of multiple equations,\u2026<\/p>\n

December 19, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paragraphs and Paragraph Formatting<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

What paragraphs are and how they are formatted are questions that continually come up both inside and outside of Microsoft. So this post describes Word\/RichEdit paragraphs in general. A subsequent post will describe the \u201cmath paragraph\u201d, which is part of a regular paragraph and is used for displayed equations, as distinguished from inline mathematical expressions\u2026.<\/p>\n

November 21, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

More on Math Context Menus<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

An earlier post describes math context menus (right click somewhere in a math zone) for changing the display characteristics of math objects, like fractions and integrals. For example context menus offer options to convert a stacked fraction into a linear fraction and vice versa. Another post describes math context menus for aligning and\/or manually breaking\u2026<\/p>\n

November 4, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Default Document Math Properties<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

A number of math display properties have document defaults. These are the ones used if you don\u2019t explicitly override them, which you can usually do by invoking a math context-menu option. The properties all pertain to \u201cdisplayed\u201d math zones, that is, math zones that begin either at the start of the document or at a\u2026<\/p>\n

October 27, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RichEdit\u2019s Nested Table Facility<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

One subject that seems to come up every other month or so is how RichEdit tables work. So I might as well post the answer. Hopefully RichEdit tables will eventually be described in the Windows SDK. They are not directly related to Math in Office, but I had mathematical expressions in mind when designing RichEdit\u2019s\u2026<\/p>\n

September 15, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Invisibles<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

No this isn\u2019t about some kind of science fiction, this is about five Unicode characters that are useful for mathematics, but are generally invisible or should be. The characters are the zero-width space (U+200B), function apply (U+2061), invisible times (U+2062), invisible comma (U+2063), and the new invisible plus (U+2064). This post discusses each one in\u2026<\/p>\n

August 25, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Improved MathML support in Word 2007<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Two very interesting developments are happening that will improve Word 2007\u2019s MathML support. The first is key for helping in getting Word 2007 math text into the scientific and technical publisher workflows and the second may help in this regard too. Specifically, new transforms are now available in beta versions enabling Word to read and write\u2026<\/p>\n

July 28, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Subscript and Superscript Bases<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

For proper math typography, it\u2019s important to know the base of a subscript or superscript expression. For example, in Einstein\u2019s equation \ud835\udc38 = \ud835\udc5a\ud835\udc50\u00b2 the superscript expression \ud835\udc50\u00b2 appears and \ud835\udc50 is the base, not \ud835\udc5a\ud835\udc50. Knowing what the base is allows proper kerning of the base relative to the script (superscript or subscript) as providing more accurate semantics in interoperating with mathematical calculation engines.<\/p>\n

June 29, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Extracting OMML from Word 2003 Math Zone Images<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The science and technology publishing industry uses Word 2003 in processing a significant portion of manuscript submissions. The industry hasn\u2019t yet been able to accept manuscripts in which the mathematical text (math zones) is created using Word 2007\u2019s new math facility since the infrastructure currently only works with math zones encoded in the Design Sciences\u2026<\/p>\n

May 13, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Updated RTF Specification<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

An updated RTF Specification is available for downloading here. I already blogged about the new version in the MS Word blog, but wanted to add a few words about math in Math in Office blog. The RTF specification includes a thorough discussion of the Office 2007 math format. The format syntax is naturally RTF syntax,\u2026<\/p>\n

April 20, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Context Menus<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

One handy way to edit mathematical text is to use math context menus. These menus are displayed when you depress the right mouse button with the mouse pointing inside a math zone. In addition to the usual Font and Paragraph options, in a math zone you see options relevant for the math object the mouse\u2026<\/p>\n

March 30, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A neat opportunity\u2026<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Okay, the Math In Office blog isn\u2019t about advertising. But just in case you\u2019re someone who really likes RichEdit and editing and wants to work on it (as I did and do J) and related text processing, here\u2019s a pretty fine opportunity. If you\u2019re not interested, please skip this post.\u00a0\u00a0 So here goes. Want\u2026<\/p>\n

March 7, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Word EQ Field and East Asian Formatting<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post discusses aspects of Word\u2019s first math editing and display facility: the EQ field. This field is still used today for some East Asian formatting constructs. To have a built-up fraction a\/b, one could (and still can) enter an EQ field with the contents \\f(a,b). To try this in Word 2007, go to the\u2026<\/p>\n

February 19, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hidden Math Features in Word 2007<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Alex Ioffe emailed me: \u201cHi Murray, I realize you probably get this often by why can\u2019t someone (pleeease!) publish some official documentation of Word 2007 Equation editor features? I have seen all of the MSN videos regarding it features and they barely scratch the surface. People like Dataninja\u00a0 (http:\/\/dataninja.files.wordpress.com\/2007\/09\/word07shortcuts.pdf) spent a great deal of time\u2026<\/p>\n

February 17, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Weird F020-F0FF characters in Word\u2019s RTF<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

People have been inquiring about Word RTF\u2019s occasional use of the Unicode Private Use Area (PUA) characters in the range U+F020..U+F0FF. These codes are also used in WordProcessingML defined by the ECMA-376 standard. This post explains what Word means by those characters. But first note a couple of things:\u00a0\u00a0 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unicode assigns no meaning\u2026<\/p>\n

January 23, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rick Shoemaker, quantum magician and microcomputer whiz<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post summarizes what I said at the retirement ceremony for my long time collaborator and good friend Dr. Rick Shoemaker, Associate Dean, College of Optical Sciences, and Professor of Optical Sciences.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll talk a bit on Rick and his love for microcomputers. Back in the 1970s, Rick regularly performed magic in nonlinear spectroscopy\u2026.<\/p>\n

January 19, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Some of My Favorite Sayings<\/h2>\n

Perfection is to be strived for but not attained A software version of this saying is \u201cshipping is a feature\u201d. In general one wants to do the best possible job, but getting something accomplished is usually better than having nothing but unfinished work. I learned this lesson by watching my PhD advisor as he got\u2026<\/p>\n

January 7, 2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Smart Canvasses<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The Microsoft Math graphing calculator folks have created a Word 2007 add-in that lets you simplify, solve, calculate, and graph your equations in 2-D or 3-D. With it installed, your technical paper becomes alive. For example, your paper may have graphs of the formulae, but a reader wants graphs for different sets of parameters. She\u2026<\/p>\n

December 2, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

STIX Beta Fonts<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The STIX folks (Scientific and Technical Information eXchange) folks have a beta version of their math font. There are more math characters in the STIX fonts than in Cambria Math. The primary typeface is Times Roman. This post describes how you can examine the fonts and gives some reasons why they aren\u2019t quite ready to\u2026<\/p>\n

November 6, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Using RichEdit 6.0 for Math<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

A number of readers have asked how to use the RichEdit 6.0 shipped with Office 2007 to edit and display mathematical text. This post explains one way to do so. The code assumes that you already have an application that knows how to instantiate a RichEdit control with a window identified by hwndRE. The function\u2026<\/p>\n

October 28, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Using Left\/Right Arrow Keys in Mathematical Text<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Paul Libbrecht commented that there\u2019s more to selection in math text than discussed in my first post on this subject. As usual, Paul is right. That post explains how one or more characters and\/or math objects are selected. In addition the topic of selection includes insertion-point behavior, which by definition selects no characters or objects\u2026.<\/p>\n

September 29, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Breaking Equations into Multiple Lines<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Long equations often do not fit on a single line and ways are needed to break them up for display on multiple lines. Word 2007 offers two approaches: automatic and manual line breaking. A related feature is alignment of multiple equations, such as aligning the equal signs of a group of equations. This post describes\u2026<\/p>\n

September 1, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Automatic arguments<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The arguments of math display objects are either optional or essential. Examples of essential arguments are the numerator and denominator of a fraction. For a legitimate fraction, both are nonempty. Hence if either or both are empty, they should be represented by a dotted square box, which indicates that an essential argument is missing. Optional\u2026<\/p>\n

July 13, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Selection<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Selection of text in a math zone obeys some special rules concerning built-up math objects, such as fractions and integrals. First some background on how these objects are stored helps to clarify the rules. In memory, math objects start with a special 16-bit character and end with a different 16-bit character. In RichEdit, the start\u2026<\/p>\n

June 30, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Getting Word 2007 Technical Files into Publisher Pipelines<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Nature, Science and other publishers have robust ways of converting Word 2003 documents with embedded Equation Editor and MathType objects into the XML representation they use for publication. Notably MathType can export mathematical equations as MathML and this capability is part of the methodology. In principle a similar approach can be used with Word 2007\u2026<\/p>\n

June 13, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Science and Nature have difficulties with Word 2007 mathematics<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Science and Nature, two premier science publications, are having difficulties with Word 2007\u2019s elegant new mathematics facility. Part of the reason is due to misunderstanding about Word\u2019s MathML support, which hopefully this post will help to rectify. And part of it is that the new facility represents mathematical text in a way that Word itself\u2026<\/p>\n

June 4, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Using Math Italic and Bold in Word 2007<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Mathematical variables represented by Latin and lower-case Greek letters are usually displayed in italic. Vectors are often displayed in upright boldface. Word 2007 allows the user to control and change these choices with the italic and bold formatting buttons on the Home tab of the user-interface ribbon or with the italic and bold hot keys\u2026<\/p>\n

May 30, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Formula Autobuildup Occurs<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

People, especially testers, often ask when does formula autobuild up (FAB) occur? After using it for a while to enter equations into Word, one gets a feel for how it works, but may still wonder if there\u2019s some well defined way to predict autobuild up. A general answer is that build up occurs when the\u2026<\/p>\n

April 15, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Creating Math Web Documents using Word 2007<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

If you use Word 2007 to create a document containing mathematical equations and expressions and save it as a web page, it looks just as good in Internet Explorer as it does in Word 2007! The equations look as though they had been typeset by TeX or in some ways even better. How did this\u2026<\/p>\n

April 15, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Math Find\/Replace and Rich Text Searches<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

A number of readers have inquired how to Find\/Replace mathematical expressions in Word 2007. This post shows how it could be done nicely, although unfortunately this functionality didn\u2019t make it into Word 2007. A previous post shows how to find simple variables in a math zone. The basic idea of finding more complex expressions is to use\u2026<\/p>\n

March 15, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cool Equation Number Macros for Word 2007<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Dong Yu of Microsoft\u2019s Speech Research Group reports: \u201cOffice 2007 comes with a very nice equation editor and bibliography manager. However, it does not support equation number management. To work around this problem. I have developed a set of macros. You can download it here.\u201d<\/p>\n

February 24, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Converting Equations from MathType to Word 2007\u2019s Equation Format<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

MathType users may want to convert their equations to Word 2007\u2019s native equation format. This can be done by exporting the equations in MathML and then pasting them into Word 2007. There are some problems and useful tricks that Dadi Gudmundsson (www.sensoranalytics.com) describes as follows: Migration Procedure Reason for migrationAfter testing the equation capability in Word 2007\u2026<\/p>\n

February 11, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Office Math RTF and OMML Documentation<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

The RTF 2007 specification is now available. Word 2007 added as many control words as Word 2000, XP and 2003 combined! The .doc spec is 4.4 MB, while the .docx is only 881KB. Admittedly a zipped version of the .doc spec is somewhat smaller than the .docx version. The math section starts on p. 124\u2026.<\/p>\n

January 12, 2007<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Saving Windows from the OS\/2 Bulldozer<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

In my blog description, I promised to write occasionally about the early Windows days. So here\u2019s a post on how David Weise and I got Windows 2.0 into protected mode and blew away the old DOS 640 KB RAM barrier. If this hadn\u2019t happened, we\u2019d probably be using some variant of OS\/2 today instead of\u2026<\/p>\n

December 7, 2006<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

LineServices<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

One of the key technologies behind the high quality display of mathematical text in Word 2007 and RichEdit 6.0 is a special component called LineServices along with its sibling Page\/TableServices. In addition to handling math display, various versions of LineServices are responsible for line layout in Word, Publisher, RichEdit, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, FrontPage, Visio, and\u2026<\/p>\n

November 14, 2006<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

User Spaces in Math Zones<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Spacing in mathematical expressions involves well defined rules. For example, in the expression a+b=c, a good math display engine automatically inserts 4\/18 em on each side of the binary operator + and 5\/18 em on each side of the relational operator =. Proper spacing between two characters depends on the properties of each character. Section\u2026<\/p>\n

November 11, 2006<\/p>\n

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Mathematical RTF<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post discusses the Word 2007 math RTF control words. A good way to understand these control words is to note that they are actually OMML tag names written with RTF syntax. Hence you can refer to the very thorough OMML documentation for more detailed information. For example in OMML, the built-up skewed fraction for\u2026<\/p>\n

October 25, 2006<\/p>\n

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Some RichEdit History<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

A couple of comments have raised the question of people outside Microsoft using the various versions of RichEdit. Specifically, Teis Johansen asks, \u201cJust to be sure. Can I redistribute RichEdit 6.0 with my application?\u201d and Kyle Alons asks, \u201cSo what\u2019s the point of listing these features without documenting how to use them?\u00a0 Just to make\u2026<\/p>\n

October 19, 2006<\/p>\n

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RichEdit versions<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Recurring questions are what RichEdit\u2019s are available, where they are installed and what features they have. A relatively new question is which RichEdit\u2019s support the new Office math editing and display. So this post attempts to answer these questions. To answer the last question first, only RichEdit 6.0 has the Office math facility, although RichEdit\u2026<\/p>\n

October 13, 2006<\/p>\n

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MathML and Ecma Math (OMML)<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

Before comparing these two math XMLs, I\u2019m excited to point you at Jennifer Michelstein\u2019s nifty post on Equations in Word 2007. It comes complete with instructive videos demonstrating how to enter mathematical expressions using the Equation Ribbon as well as using the linear format discussed in my earlier postings. Jennifer plans to add other posts\u2026<\/p>\n

October 6, 2006<\/p>\n

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How I got into technical WP<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post tells a bit of how I started in technical word processing back in the middle of the last century. More precisely it was in 1965 that I started using a nifty (for that time) vector plotting program by Grey Freeman at the Yale Computer Center. I was a Yale grad student in theoretical\u2026<\/p>\n

September 20, 2006<\/p>\n

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High-Quality Editing and Display of Mathematical Text in Office 2007<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This post is a summary of material I\u2019ve given in recent talks on math in Office such as this one. In the talks, I describe and demonstrate how Unicode\u2019s rich mathematical character set combined with OpenType font technology, TeX \u2018s mathematical typography principles, and enhanced autocorrection can be used to produce high-quality, streamlined technical text\u2026<\/p>\n

September 13, 2006<\/p>\n

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Formula Autobuildup in Word 2007<\/a><\/a><\/h2>\n

This is an introductory post to help users who want to create stunning technical documents in Word 2007. If you\u2019ve typed Alt+= in Word 2007, you\u2019ve seen a math-zone object inserted that says \u201cType equation here\u201d. Actually you can type any mathematical expression there, even just a simple variable like x. If the expression\u2019s math\u2026<\/p>\n

September 6, 2006<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post gives links and brief introductions to my MSDN Math in Office blog posts. Some of the posts aren\u2019t archived and don\u2019t have links. They might be the subjects of future posts. Contents Math Autocomplete. 6 Math Zone Navigation. 6 Using MathML-Based Speech to Edit Math in Different Math Models. 7 Using Math Alphanumerics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40611,"featured_media":55,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-math-in-office"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

This post gives links and brief introductions to my MSDN Math in Office blog posts. Some of the posts aren\u2019t archived and don\u2019t have links. They might be the subjects of future posts. Contents Math Autocomplete. 6 Math Zone Navigation. 6 Using MathML-Based Speech to Edit Math in Different Math Models. 7 Using Math Alphanumerics […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40611"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/math-in-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}