Talk:MathType

OpenOffice Math

Is there a reason for OpenOffice Math not exporting in this format? Copyright issues maybe? Gimboid 18:38, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know. Few guesses could be: it is not open source, and it does not even import TeX without attaching a for-MathType-sequence. Springbreak04 05:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

cleanup

Article has been cleanup to read more like a wiki article.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Holsum (talk • contribs)

While not strictly an advert there is little to distinguish the article from some promotional literature. Is there any other articles which discuss MathType that could help flesh the article out a bit more.--Salix (talk): 21:14, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Another attempt at Cleanup

I have had another go at cleaning up the article, after my last attempt had objections. To avoid an edit war I have put my proposed new version (diff from current version) in my user namespace. If there are no comments or objections in a reasonable amount of time then I will copy it to the live article; I will notify LikeLakers2 who recently reverted my edit.

I think the objections before might have been mostly because I removed references. This is because I thought that references always have to be third-party, so I took out all the Design Science references (i.e. all references!). It turns out that some first-party references are allowed, so although the article still needs better references, it was wrong for me to simply rip them all out. My new proposed article keeps a lot of the references, and even adds new ones.

I have still removed the "884 applications" claim, because this is a flat-out lie (as I've explained above, but I'm happy to explain again), but I explained precisely what is supported. I also removed the Acrobat mention again, again because Wikipedia is not a guide and it is well out of date (the reference is from 1999) anyway. Quietbritishjim (talk) 15:45, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I've now updated the article with these changes. Quietbritishjim (talk) 15:41, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Your, "OLE is the reason for compatibility with hundreds of Applications" is inacurate. As I understand it, beyond OLE, many applications use their own custom flavors of TeX, MathML, or other microformats to display equations. MathType creates special translators for those variations so that you can copy/paste and edit those equation. As it is currently worded I don't believe the "Support for other applications" section properly reflects reality. Holsum (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:39, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't know of any translators for custom flavours of TeX and MathML. If they exist then there are very few: in the vast majority of cases, choosing the application from MathType's compatibility menu just switches between copying raw TeX, MathML, or TeX wrapped in an HTML <img> tag. Maybe there are other cases like the Wikipedia one mentioned in the article: the output is just TeX as usual, but wrapped in a wiki <math> tag. This is hardly a custom translator and definitely not a "microformat". The text that I removed recently misrepresents this. (BTW, if you wrote it, what is EGO?)

The fact that MathType has presets to choose the right import/export format is still nice and worth mentioning, so long as it's honest what it is. It's currently mentioned at the end of the end of the section on application support, but maybe it could be made a bit more prominent. However, it would be nice to keep the current structure of one paragraph each for Windows desktop, Mac desktop and web applications; or at least have a well thought out replacement structure, rather than just plonking this fact at the start or end of the section.

A big problem with all this is that there's no reliable source for any of this. Design Science's website just claims compatibility with 600+ applications, without breaking down which ones have genuine embedding support (like OLE and iWork '09), which ones have special translators of some sort, and which are just generic copy/paste TeX and TeX <img> tags. Their works with page has products in all categories. Indeed the majority are just websites that allow image tags, and saying that MathType is compatible with these is a long stretch. It even includes applications where the only option is to export an image from MathType and import it into the application (e.g. Flash InDesign OpenOffice for Mac). No one outside the Design Science marketing department would call these applications "compatible"! Quietbritishjim (talk) 14:14, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Functionality

The functionalities of the Design Science and WIRIS versions of MathType (for Mac) are so different that they need separate articles. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:24, 18 January 2024 (UTC).