iWork (Pages) Equation Editor, Expression Calculator?

[Max on Macs]

Hi guys,

While Microsoft Office 2004 does run reasonably well on these new Intel macs, sometimes it hangs and Microsoft doesn't seem to care. And I was like, well fine I'll give iWork a try. Keynote is awesome, does all I need it to and very easy to use. Pages is very nice too, better and easier to use than Word for everything except one important thing. At college I need to be able to write equations out properly. I have MathType for Mac and that works pretty well with Word, but it doesn't integrate at all with Pages. Is there anything simillar to MathType that integrates with Pages? Or better still, a way to integrate MathType with pages?

Also, I need a good calculator, again for college. My classmates use AllerCalc (www.allersoft.com) which is a free program for Windows. That's the problem though, it's only available for Windows. I have downloaded the trial of Mathematica for Mac (whew, good on them, they got a Universal binary out!) and it works very well. The problem I have with it is that we aren't allowed to use it in exams because it can do so much for you, so whenever an exam comes up I have to borrow a PC laptop which is quite frustrating. Don't suggest Windows on Mac please, I'm after a Mac solution

Thanks

 

[aegisdesign]

What's wrong with using Grapher? It's included with OSX 10.4 in the Applications->Utilities folder?

You can copy from that and paste straight into Pages.

 

[MisterMe]

What's wrong with using Grapher? It's included with OSX 10.4 in the Applications->Utilities folder?

....

Grapher's equation editing capabilities are extremely limited.

 

[CheZChaZ]

Use LaTeXiT

I use LaTeXiT as an equation editor with Keynote all the time. It works as well in Pages. The only drawback is you have to know some TeX to use it.

http://ktd.club.fr/programmation/latexit.php

--ChaZ

 

[Eraserhead]

I'd give another vote for LaTeXiT, an excellent application, though you need to learn TeX but learning TeX makes it a hell of a lot quicker to type equations. You also need to install a copy of LaTeX

Hello


> I wondered if you could give me links for where you can get
> Ghostwriter, dvipdf and pdflatex as you don't seem to have any on
> your site and I don't know where you might get them.
>
You must not be familiar with LaTeX (not LaTeXit, just LaTeX). LaTeX
is a kind of very complicated thing. So, it is not merely
"downloadable". That's why you could not find it easily. And LaTeXiT
relies on LaTeX.
Usually, I assume that people that want to use LaTeXiT are familiar
enough with LaTeX to already have a working installation.

However, here are some explanations and the way to do things :
LaTeX is not really a single program. It is a bunch of executable
files and data files that work together. So, like with Linux, you
will only find LaTeX *distributions*. A distribution of LaTeX is a
set of files that somebody gathered and organized so that once
installed, it would work.
On MacOS, there are two well-known distributions : Gerben Wierda's
distribution through the i-installer, and the Fink distribution. I
will only talk about Gerben Wierda's installation.
On the Gerben Wierda's i-installer page (http://www.rna.nl/ii.html),
you can download the i-installer program (http://bloch.ling.yale.edu/
volumes/ii2/II2.dmg)
The i-installer is a little program that allows you to install LaTeX
(or other things) on your system, by getting all the files you need
in a remote location. This is very handy, because you are ensured
that the files you get are the most recent ones, and all the
installation is made for you.
So, just download the i-installer, open the dmg, and install it. Now,
you can launch the i-installer.
Choose the menu item "i-packages > Known packages i-directory"
In the left-panel choose and <Use> the Gerben's i-Directory @ TUG
In the right panel, choose "Tex" and <Open i-package>. Then, follow
the instructions, and LaTeX will be installed on your system. You
just have to answer yes (choose the default answer) to all questions.
Since you're there, you should also install Ghostscript 8 the same
way, because it is required for most programs.

Now, LaTeX is installed on your computer. Wow. But if you were not
warned, you would not even notice that ! In fact, LaTeX has no
graphical front-end, the programs are Unix oriented and can only be
called on the command line (using the /Application/Utilities/Terminal)
However, do not worry : there exist graphical interfaces to use LaTeX
more user friendly. These are third-party software, most of the time
free. LaTeXiT is one of them : it allows to typeset small equations.
To write big documents, you would rather use TexShop or iTexMac,
which are designed for that.

As you can see, it is not easy without explanations. But once it
works, you are not bothered any more.

Regards,

Pierre Chatelier

 

[MisterMe]

MathEQ does beautiful equations. However, I have yet to figure out how to do proper baseline adjustment for inline equations in Pages.