If you have read much of this blog, you know that I’m mildly obsessed with mathematical typesetting. I don’t know why — I think it’s a combination of (a) having worked in desktop publishing, (b) using math everyday, (c) liking LaTeX, but (d) thinking that typing plain markup of any kind is inefficient. So when I found out that I could get a copy of Office 2007 from my school, even though I’d rather that everyone just used OpenOffice or LyX, I had to try it out. Here are my thoughts:
- Word finally respects math. Equations are no longer just pictures. They are parts of the text that can wrap within paragraphs, can have their fonts/sizes changed easily, etc. I always thought it was strange that math was neglected before, since programmers deal with a lot of math.
- There is similarity to TeX. The linear format is essentially an easier-to-read form of TeX that uses Unicode characters for symbols instead of TeX commands like “\beta.” Some things are different — for example, “(x)/(y)” produces
instead of TeX’s “\frac{x}{y}.” It’s obvious that some Microsoft programmers wanted to show TeX some love, since Vista apparently has changes specifically for MikTeX.
- However, almost all of the TeX-like linear input format is undocumented, at least from within the program. I wouldn’t have known about the format if I hadn’t seen this blog post with examples of the linear format. This document more thoroughly documents the linear input method. Unfortunately, casual users, or even not-so-casual ones (absent minded professors, say) may never find out about linear, and will be stuck pointing-and-clicking.
- One thing that really annoys me: In LaTeX, LyX. OpenOffice, etc. you type “hat” then “x” to get
. In Word 2007, you type “x” then “hat.” This actually makes more sense, but I’ve trained my brain to put the hat first. Also, this easy method of putting accents on characters is undocumented to my knowledge.
- You can’t use the new equation editor in PowerPoint. It makes no sense — I hate making PowerPoint (and Impress for that matter) presentations with any math at all because you have to manually align all of the characters. However, you could just make an outline in Word 2007, change the orientation to landscape and increase the font for some quick slides.
- If you save to the Word 2003 (or before) format, the equations become images — they aren’t converted to MathType/MS Equation Editor. This probably isn’t a huge deal, but it could be very annoying. Design Science, makers of MathType and the old Microsoft Equation Editor have instructions for creating a quick-access shortcut to the old editor, which is still included with Office 2007.
- I crashed it while playing with the new equation editor. The document was recovered, but all of the times that I complained about older versions of LyX crashing on me, I always had to work harder to get it to sputter out.
A word on the .docx file format: There’s a little fight going on between Microsoft and the ODF alliance (which includes Sun, IBM, and Adobe, among others) over formatting issues. Everybody wants an open format, but Microsoft won’t use ODF — they want OOXML, the format used in Office 2007. Right now, we’re juggling ODT, DOCX and the old DOC formats. Ultimately, Microsoft’s market power will probably make OOXML the standard, and OpenOffice, AbiWord, KOffice, etc. will support it as best they can. I think that having a couple of open standards will probably be a good thing, and hopefully having open specifications will make it easier for programmers to write good converters, so formatting won’t be much of an issue, and Word, Writer, KWord, AbiWord, etc. documents will be more interoperable.
