Math is hard, let's do Unicode!

Why does Unicode define a Double Integral glyph? Wouldn't two single integral glyphs be the same thing?

>The input can be hard to read for complex
>mathematical expressions.

It's not only hard to read, it's also hard to type. However, int he long run it's the only reasonable system for typesetting math that I have tried. Especially, palette-based systems often turn out to be much too contrained for complex formulas.

I've read somewhere (I don't remember exactly) a suggestion that math input should be handled as a kind of specialized IME. This, IMHO, is a *very good idea*. There are clearly some common issues, e.g. how to access a large number of symbols in an intuitive (or at least easily memorized) way. Moreover, I think usability experts could come up with better solutions than what is currently available (possibly with a lot of work).

One point where math input differ from a normal IME is the usefulness of user-defined and per-document shortcuts. For math documents, quick access to (and easy modification of) frequently used notations is a huge time saver.

>the font technology is limited in that it
>uses multiple character sets of 256 symbols
>instead of Unicode and lacks the power of
>OpenType font technology

There is some evolution on these points (etex, omega, pdftex, aleph, xetex), but yes, basically the core system is frozen and rewrites (e.g. ExTeX) are far from completion.

>Currently there's the Equation Editor with
>MathType as its more complete rendition.

Errr... Equation Editor is nearly unusable. Really. Not only it feels unstable (rendering inconsistensies, lots of flickering), but it is so limited that it can hardly be considered as more than a toy. It doesn't seem to be developed any more, too. I hope it'll be replaced someday by a better tool.

MathType is clearly more powerful. I've not tried it, but from what I've seen I'm not tempted to try it. It's still palette-based, and the only time I tried to solve a problem involving it, the only explaination I found on DESSCI's website was "it's a bug in Word", which may be true but is no real solution. Also, see below on security.

>Also we're working on something.

Interesting! Is there a way to learn more on the subject? (url?)

>We're hoping to add MathML support into IE

Good! From the look of things, it may take some time, but I'm happy to hear this.

One thing I wonder about, is whether MathML could be embedded (with a plugin) in the new Office Open Document Format.

>One solution is to download the MathPlayer

Ugh. I tried it. The first time it's loaded in IE, you get a rather intrusive splash screen. And the math fonts are not so pretty.

Worse, there is *no* information on security on DESSCI's website. Their first reaction to the local zone lockdown in SP2 was to find out how to *turn it off*. This doesn't give me a lot of trust in their products, and for a binary browser plug-in that's very poor advertising. For now, I don't use MathPlayer, and I won't until they put a lot more emphasis on security and reliability in their development process (and show it clearly, so that I'm informed).

Anyway, thanks for asking around, for this post, and for many other interesting posts.

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2007/10/31 The L word (Limonata, I mean - the *other* L word)

2007/08/09 The phantom kern get smashed, but he may invade someone else's space if he does