![]() ![]() Other proprietary programs force a menu-driven point-and-click approach upon you, which you may like but may not like. You can tinker with the low-level creation of fonts or just quickly type out a letter. You can use with a point-and-click IDE, or you can type everything out by hand with a text editor and compile from the command line, or anything in between. This is in stark contrast to MathType, which is proprietary and closed, and although you get the “Lite” version bundled in with office software, the full version will set you back at least $37. And this is a system that has been around for 40 years (if you count TeX) and has millions of users, many of whom actively contribute to the further development of the system by writing specialized packages and macros. You can download it right now for just about any operating system imaginable, and have the full strength of the system available to you at no cost. ![]() The web likes open standards, and since MathML is all but impossible to use, fills a gaping need for free, open-source mathematical typesetting. Online typesetters abound, and more are popping up. blogs like Casting Out Nines can do, and so can Wikispaces and several other web services. The wildly popular online presentation tool Prezi has said that integration is coming. Last year, Google Documents added an equation editor that is basically a stripped-down editor with a point-and-click interface. is becoming a standard elsewhere, especially on the web.Most, if not all, major publications in math, computer science, engineering, and physics use as the preferred typesetting system. is the mathematical typesetting standard in all technical disciplines and in many related fields.MathType is getting better at visual appeal - it doesn’t look appalling any more - but nothing beats for refinement and polish. Why use when MathType is already out there, bundled with MS Word and other office programs, tempting us with its pretty point-and-click interface? Five reasons. I can tell you that students can learn it, and learn to love it. is accessible enough that every math teacher and every student in a math class at or above Calculus can (and many should) learn and use it for their work. I have been using for 15 years now and have been teaching it to our sophomore math majors for five years. I warned her that a pro- blog post was in the offing with those remarks, and so it comes to this. Maria is on record as being pro-MathType and yesterday she claimed that is “not intuitive to learn”. Over the weekend a minor smack-talk session opened up on Twitter between Maria Andersen and about half a dozen other math people about MathType versus. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |