Thoughts on LibreOffice Math

[Frédéric WANG]

On 04/07/2013 22:58, Ruslan Kabatsayev wrote:

So undo/redo is here: 
https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=38888

> 1. Currently by default clicking inside the equation while editing 
> moves the cursor to corresponding place in code — when enabling visual 
> editor you don't have this feature
OK, I think it is https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=38886

> 2. Once you edit your handwritten formula in visual editor, all your 
> code is reformatted and frequently appears harder to read
This is an issue similar to the exact source lost when converting from 
StarMath to MathML. So here, "2x^2", "2x ^   2 " or "{  2    x^2}" gives 
the same internal tree and are then serialized into a "canonical" 
representation that is not always the simplest one. I'm not sure there 
is a simple solution to that.

> 3. I didn't find any easy way to enter non-alphanumeric symbols, e.g. 
> greek letters, hats, arrows etc. — have to resort to manual code 
> edition (which already appears hard to read)
I think some hats and arrows are in the toolbox but greek should be 
added too. Probably some shortcuts could be defined too e.g. in Amaya 
"ctrl+g, a" creates a greek letter alpha.

> 4. Symbols like "^", "_", "/" can't be entered since they are 
> automatically translated into special constructs — again have to 
> resort to manual code edition
I believe this was supposed to be a feature not a bug. Perhaps they 
should be replaced by different shortcuts like crtl+^.

> 5. Can't easily remove parentheses around some text - have to cut the 
> text, delete the parentheses box, then re-paste text.
The fenced construction have a special node type with the open fence, 
content and close fence. Perhaps you want a command to automatically 
remove the fences? Or that when you delete one fence character, the node 
is automatically converted to a non-fenced construction.

> (Ideally, I'd like to have Mathematica style shortcuts to enter 
> formulas in WYSIWYG editor, but I didn't have enough time to hack 
> LOMath to address this idea) 
That would be at least helpful if you could give the list of Mathematica 
shortcuts.


It seems that you want to preserve the frame to enter the StarMath 
source. I don't know if that it just because of the limitations of the 
current visual editor but personally, I imagine that in the future we 
could have only the visual rendering of the formula ; but one could type 
StarMath code directly in the placeholder and it would immediately be 
converted to the internal representation and inserted at the specified 
position. This would essentially address your issues 3 and 4 and remove 
the need for 1 and 2.


Thanks,

-- 
Frédéric Wang
maths-informatique-jeux.com/blog/frederic