Murray Sargent: Math in Office
I'm a software development engineer in Microsoft Office and have been working mostly on the RichEdit editor since 1994. In this blog I focus on mathematics in Office along with some posts on RichEdit and the early Windows days
Plain Text Math in Bidirectional Contexts
In plain text, bidirectional text (text including some Arabic or Hebrew) is generally displayed...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 02/28/2011
Check out Live Writer
This is a test to see how I can use Live Writer to make blog posts more nicely. In particular, it’s...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 01/01/2011
MathML To-Do List
In my MathML 3.0 post, I noted that several things were postponed for future consideration. The...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 12/31/2010
Mac Word 2011 and Math
Office for Mac 2011 has many cool additions. The best of them all (well you know my bias!) is that...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 11/22/2010
Linear Format Notations for Mathematics
I have been having a great discussion with Christian Lerch about computer-oriented mathematical...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 08/30/2010
Article/Video on Murray Sargent and Math in Office
The article Professor's Laser Focus Gets Math into Office tells some of the story behind the Math in...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 06/17/2010
Bidi Paragraph with Parenthesized Text
The previous post described four tailorings of the Unicode Bidi Algorithm (UBA) in situations where...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 05/06/2010
Tailoring the Unicode Bidi Algorithm
The Unicode Bidi Algorithm is a very useful, general, and standard approach for displaying text that...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 04/06/2010
Linear Format Version 3
Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics, Version 3 (Unicode Technical Note #28) is now...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 03/13/2010
Math Ribbon Entry of Subscripts and Superscripts
As noted in the previous post Keyboard Entry of Subscripts and Superscripts, the preferred way to...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 03/03/2010
Keyboard Entry of Subscripts and Superscripts
The Send-a-Smile and Send-a-Frown feedback from Office beta users is very useful for finding out...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 02/08/2010
Negated Operators
Sometimes you need to enter a negated operator like ≠. If you’re a C/C++ programmer, you might think...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 02/05/2010
Special Capabilities of a Math Font
A fairly common inquiry is how a program can use and access the many special glyph variants of a...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 01/11/2010
High Fonts and Math Fonts
Math fonts differ from other fonts not only in their extensive coverage of math operators, symbols,...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 12/01/2009
Directionality in Math Zones
In most places, mathematical text is written “left to right” (LTR). For example, in the...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 11/12/2009
Equation Numbering Prototype
When writing the Math in Office 2010 post back in July, I could just imagine the disappointment...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 10/14/2009
RichEdit Friendly Name Hyperlinks
This post is a companion to Automatic RichEdit Hyperlinks. As stated in that post, RichEdit has two...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 09/24/2009
RichEdit Versions Update to 7.0
The original RichEdit Versions post covered RichEdit versions 1.0 through 6.0, since 6.0 was the...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 09/05/2009
Automatic RichEdit Hyperlinks
RichEdit has two kinds of hyperlinks, automatic hyperlinks (autoURLs) and friendly name hyperlinks....
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 08/31/2009
Entering Matrices
The Office math ribbon has a few examples of matrices, but you might like to be able to enter a lot...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 08/18/2009
Math in Office 2010
Imagine typing alt+= in PowerPoint, OneNote, Excel, and, of course, Word and Outlook to enter a math...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 07/13/2009
Entering Math via the Linear Format
The previous blog post is on the cool math handwriting recognition shipped with Windows 7. The post...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 05/06/2009
Math Handwriting Recognition
Starting with Windows 7, Windows includes a cool applet called the Math Input Panel. This applet...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 05/06/2009
Empty Math Zone Place Holders
You type Alt+= or click the Insert ribbon Equation button, and presto! You’ve inserted an empty math...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 04/27/2009
Restricted Math Zone Character Formatting
A number of character formatting properties are treated differently in a math zone than they are in...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 03/04/2009
RichEdit Paragraph Indents
RichEdit paragraph indents are based on the original RichEdit 1.0 definitions. These differ somewhat...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 02/16/2009
OMML Specification, Version 2
The OMML (Office math markup language) specification has been improved in response to the great...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 01/16/2009
The Math Paragraph
The earlier post Breaking Equations into Multiple Lines describes equation line breaking and...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 12/19/2008
Paragraphs and Paragraph Formatting
What paragraphs are and how they are formatted are questions that continually come up both inside...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 11/21/2008
More on Math Context Menus
An earlier post describes math context menus (right click somewhere in a math zone) for changing the...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 11/04/2008
Default Document Math Properties
A number of math display properties have document defaults. These are the ones used if you...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 10/27/2008
RichEdit’s Nested Table Facility
One subject that seems to come up every other month or so is how RichEdit tables work. So I might as...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 09/15/2008
The Invisibles
No this isn’t about some kind of science fiction, this is about five Unicode characters that...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 08/25/2008
Improved MathML support in Word 2007
Two very interesting developments are happening that will improve Word 2007’s MathML support. The...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 07/28/2008
Subscript and Superscript Bases
For proper math typography, it’s important to know the base of a subscript or superscript...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 06/29/2008
Extracting OMML from Word 2003 Math Zone Images
The science and technology publishing industry uses Word 2003 in processing a significant portion of...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 05/13/2008
Updated RTF Specification
An updated RTF Specification is available for downloading here. I already blogged about the new...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 04/20/2008
Math Context Menus
One handy way to edit mathematical text is to use math context menus. These menus are displayed when...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 03/30/2008
A neat opportunity...
Okay, the Math In Office blog isn't about advertising. But just in case you're someone who really...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 03/07/2008
Word EQ Field and East Asian Formatting
This post discusses aspects of Word’s first math editing and display facility: the EQ field. This...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 02/19/2008
Hidden Math Features in Word 2007
Alex Ioffe emailed me Hi Murray, I realize you probably get this often by why can't someone...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 02/17/2008
Weird F020-F0FF characters in Word’s RTF
People have been inquiring about Word RTF’s occasional use of the Unicode Private Use Area...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 01/23/2008
Rick Shoemaker, quantum magician and microcomputer whiz
This post summarizes what I said at the retirement ceremony for my long time collaborator and good...
Author: MurrayS3 Date: 01/19/2008