[PLUG] Formulas

Rogan Creswick creswick at gmail.com
Wed Apr 8 01:36:18 UTC 2009


On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 4:57 PM, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I need the formulas as vector graphics. No bitmaps, please. Because
> print output will be to laser and raster images on lasers are generally
> ugly.

It looks like inkscape has a LaTeX tool:

http://eugenwintersberger.vox.com/library/post/use-inkscape-with-latex.html

assuming that works, you could make your formulas in LaTeX, then
generate the images with inkscape.

--Rogan



>
> OOo has a dandy Math module that creates these beautifully. However, it
> has so many bugs that it is currently unusable. (Yes, even 2.4.1 on
> Hardy.) Furthermore, you can use it to place the formula in an OOo
> document (e.g., Writer), but the only export option is PDF. I'd much
> prefer EPS or SVG because you can't easily place a PDF in another
> program.
>
> KFormula also has a nice little math editor that is in many ways even
> easier to use than OOo's math editor. However, it has even more bugs
> than OOo's math editor. It offers an EPS export option, but if you try
> it you get "unable to parse xml data." Ditto for its SVG export option.
> (I may pursue this further if I can't find anything better.)
>
> LyX creates dandy formulas, but if I want them in a specific font I can
> get them out of LyX only in PDF format.
>
> Why the problem with PDF, you ask? Because I really need the formulas
> as individual graphics. I can export anything that I can print to PDF
> with CUPS-PDF. But to convert that to a vector graphic does not seem
> possible. I could use pdf2ps and then convert the PS. But pdf2ps
> rasterizes the PDF. No more scaling for that image.
>
> Scribus can take LaTeX code and generate a formula from it. Works a
> treat, except that the output is a bitmap and you have your choice of
> only three fonts, and only the regular-italic versions.
>
> I should add that I am not faulting Linux here. There are only three
> packages that I know of on Windows that can do what I want, and they
> are all outrageously expensive (InDesign, FrameMaker and Ventura). And
> two of them are in a rest home.
>
> It may not be possible to do what I want, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
> Any suggestions welcome.
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