mathtype and mathcad

useful additions

Felix Grant finds much to admire in the latest versions of two familiar programs

I have been spending a lot of time, recently, on that most tedious area of mathematical work: generating documentation and accompanying instructional materials. This is not life's biggest thrill, so I naturally turn to the range of software products that offer to lighten and shorten it. Two such, which have done tours of battle duty at the front, are Mathtype and Mathcad; neither needs much introduction to anyone working with mathematical notation at any level, but both have seen recent revision and upgrade.

Even if you don't know Mathtype as such, you will have encountered its 'lite' version in the guise of Equation Editor, which comes bundled with every major word processor and other products besides. Programmed with accepted typesetting conventions for page layout of traditional mathematical notation, it renders notation into graphical form with minimal demands on the user. Version 5.0 was released onto the market by its developers, Design Science, in September 2001 and my review copy arrived from European supplier Chartwell-Yorke shortly thereafter. This is a significant upgrade on release 4.0, with a number of features which make the shift worthwhile; and even more so for my many colleagues who are still using version 3.

Mathcad is equally familiar, as one of the best-known products in the 'mathematics processor' market. Originally under-described as a mathematical scratchpad, it is now presented as (and can be) a complete technical computing environment. For many users, it serves as something between those two limits: an intelligent mathematical word-processor that carries the numerical and symbolic math load as well. Version 2001i, somewhat delayed, appeared in January this year; Ray Girvan will review it in the next issue of Scientific Computing World, but I have some first impressions to offer from this viewpoint.

• The equation is created and edited by Mathtype (centre bottom) and returned to the Word document (top left). The document is exported to Mathpage using an option from the Mathtype button on the Word toolbar (drop-down menu visible at centre top) and options selected from the resulting dialogue (top right) before saving.

Although paper output still remains important in this sort of work (despite perennial hopes and predictions to the contrary), it is giving way to electronic means of dissemination. HTML is increasingly the medium of choice, especially since the emergence of agreed standards for MathML. Both products recognise this trend. Both suggest that they reproduce your screen image faithfully on the web; neither does so fully, but both offer valuable timesaving shortcuts to a very fair approximation. They approach the issue in different ways, however. Mathcad comes with a full, 'Professional edition' install of IBM's Techexplorer plug-in for your browser to enable full use of the generated MathML material; those who view it elsewhere will need to download at least the basic edition in order to see what you have created for them. Mathtype, when installed in Word as a replacement for Equation Editor, now comes with a 'Mathpage' option to translate the whole of the current document from Word to HTML. This can be fine tuned to control the process to a great extent: type of translator, use of gifs or MathML, and so on. Mathcad exports its own pages directly to HTML or MathML with, again, user control over the methods used.

There is no Mathpage equivalent for other word processors such as WordPerfect or WordPro, although Mathtype itself will seamlessly replace Equation Editor in both cases and operate as an OLE partner with any suitably capable windows software. I habitually work in WordPerfect, using its own XML tools, but have found myself transferring completed mathematical material into Word as a way-station en route to MathML, because Mathpage works so well.

The differing approaches taken to web page construction in the two packages are interesting. There has always been a tension between design and content in the use of HTML, and it is reflected clearly here. Designers, particularly those who have come from a paperbased background, have been used to complete control over a finite space within a visible page frame. HTML, on the other hand, operates within a window onto a potentially infinite page. Bringing these together into a satisfactory compromise can be a real headache. Mathcad and Word are both page-based products at root; each generates its material in A4 (or A3, or letter size, or whatever) bites. It is in how each views the transition to the more fluid Web that the differences show up.

Mathcad's defaults assume that the user has taken great care to construct a particular layout, and will want to preserve it. This is an approach appreciated by many of my coworkers; a document can be constructed to maximise communication through design, in full confidence that it will be viewed in something close to the original physical form. It achieves this by wholesale generation of graphic objects with absolute HTML coordinates. This default can be changed, through the preferences menu, in which case export is to an HTML table and can utilise HTML templates.

• Illustrates how the layout of the Mathcad document (top right), when saved as a MathML file (dialogue at top) using the absolute positioning default, preserves its layout regardless of the shape of the browser window shape (top left, centre, and bottom).

Mathtype's Mathpage takes the opposite tack: it assumes that component elements have been positioned relative to the visible space rather than to the physical dimensions of the original Word document. It centres an equation, for example, half way across the current browser window and not at a given number of pixels from the left hand edge. The text flows to fit the browser as it is resized. There is, of course, no right or wrong in this matter; it comes down to preference and context.

Most of us do not, in any case, choose our preferred tools on a single criterion; and are unlikely in any case to be choosing between these two, which serve different, complementary rather than competing purposes.

• Illustrates the different approach taken by Mathtype’s Mathpage which reflows the text and repositions the equation to fit the changing size and shape of the browser window.

My own preference is for the relative positioning method, and with Mathcad set accordingly I have found that the two programs work well together. If you are documenting static theoretical results, or if text predominates and is illustrated by equations, you are likely to use a conventional word processor with Mathtype. For dynamic material whose changes must be echoed in the documentation, or where text is interspersed in a mass of mathematical material, you will more likely turn to Mathcad - which, incidentally, now sports hyperlinks between its regions and files, making navigation far less exhausting for both author and consumer.

Graphic objects are exported in PNG or JPEG format from Mathcad and from Mathtype in GIF, Windows metafiles or encapsulated Post Script. Mathtype's GIFs preserve the feature which I only recently discovered in version 4: the full code necessary for reconstruction of the Mathtype equation is saved within every exported image.

Turning away from documentary considerations, for a moment, Mathcad has some new mathematical arrivals on the block. Systems of ordinary differential equations are handled, subject to limits on the problem space, by the odesolve() function. A new pair of stiff ODE solvers (one for endpoint solution, the other for a range of equally spaced values, as with existing tools) dispense with the Jacobean matrix input with an accuracy trade-off.

Security concerns have obviously been much in the mind at Mathsoft, for several prophylactic measures have been implemented here - from simple protection against clumsy users through to password encryption and script blocking. I can't say that I have worked in a context where the stricter forms are a high priority, but they are there for those authors with more demanding needs. Other arrivals worth mentioning include a better print dialogue, enhancements to plot options, the ability to format multiple document regions and, under the bonnet, improved control of OLE operations Both packages include the necessary updating to guarantee work under Windows and Office XP. Mathtype offers explicit support for the 2002 versions of Word and PowerPoint; I've quickly run through a session or two in this environment, but not in depth, as I don't use those versions myself as yet. Mathcad will now log data live from a Measurement Computing (or Computer Boards, to use the old name by which they are often still better known) card. This last is a capability that greatly interests me, since much of my work is field or industrial monitoring and research, but not yet tested in the time available. This is another area that I shall have to leave for Ray Girvan's full review to come.

Mathtype has become easier to use in a number of respects. The one I most appreciate is addition of new keyboard commands which allow faster, simpler editing of matrices: press Ctrl+M, then add rows (A)bove and (B)elow, columns to (L)eft and (R)ight, delete rows or columns, and so on. How far you share my unbridled delight at this addition will, of course, depend not only on how often you edit matrices but the degree of your enthusiasm for keyboard shortcuts; but in my own case it has dramatically increased productivity.

Also very welcome (though less often used, since I generally rely on Mathtype's own decisions in this respect) is the simplified means of resetting manually resized characters.

Software increasingly offers 'unlimited' this, that, or the other; by which they mean, presumably, 'limited only by system resources'.

For some reason, I feel a cussed need to test these claims and waste a considerable amount of my own time in the process. In the case of Mathtype I can report that the available levels of undo and redo commands, whether truly unlimited or not, certainly ran into the hundreds before I became bored.

I have had about six months in which to discover the delights of Mathtype 5, and its new features have become an indispensable part of my work. I would recommend the upgrade to users of version 4, and strongly urge it on those who still use older releases. Mathcad 2001i has only been with me for less than a month, and I am still discovering it; only during the writing of this review, for instance, did I discover relative positioning in the MathML output.

The 'i' in the end of the name, I surmise, indicates 'increment' since this is not such a dramatic move forward as most Mathcad upgrades - but there are improvements over version 2001 which I already value, and others which I know will be important to clients and colleagues.

Ray Girvan will be reviewing it fully in due course, with a more rounded oversight of its abilities; I shall be travelling along with him for the ride. In the meantime, the developments in these two packages certainly make the chore of documenting mathematical work very much less onerous than it was a year ago.

Mathcad's new managers stress engineering

One significant change since v.2001 is that the makers are 'Mathsoft Engineering & Education Inc' rather than plain 'Mathsoft'.

This reflects a management-led buyout in January 2001, when Mathsoft's Engineering and Education Products Division (EEPD) became a stand-alone private company, while the remaining Mathsoft was rebadged as Insightful Corporation. A driving factor appears to be that Mathsoft suffered from a syndrome affecting many publicly-funded US technical companies: low stock prices and lack of investor interest despite successful products (see 'IPOs out, going private in?' by Tom Taulli, CNET News.com, 22 Sep, 2001). In such cases, management buyout can be a successful recovery strategy. According to Insightful Corporation, now exclusively concentrating on S-Plus and StatServer, Mathcad was a financial drain on the faster-growing sales of Mathsoft's Seattle-based division selling statistical, 'data mining' and business information products.

At Mathsoft's Fourth Quarter 2000 Conference, Chuck Digate, then president and CEO, said: '[EEPD] has experienced relatively slow growth over the last few years due to the maturity of the Mathcad franchise in corporate and academic engineering markets ... After an exhaustive attempt to sell this business to a third party, I encouraged the division's management team early last year to attempt a buyout.'

Given this, it's hard to say whether EEPD jumped or was pushed, but publicly at least the split was amicable.

The new Mathsoft is stressing even further Mathcad's long-standing slant toward applied mathematics. Mathcad's by-line is now 'the essential tool for every engineer', and this is echoed throughout the mathcad.com website and in the line-up of specialist Extension Packs and Electronic Books. Meanwhile, the central suite of bundled software that augments Mathcad remains the same: IBM techexplorer for MathML display, Visual Solutions' VisSim block-diagram simulation, Autodesk's VoloView Express for reading AutoCAD files, and Intergraph's 2D parametric CAD package, SmartSketch. Variants in this list - for instance, full versions vs. limited editions - ring the changes on the single current release of Mathcad, 2001i, optimised for Windows XP but running on all post-98 Windows versions.

One manifestation of this 'single Mathcad' approach is that from March 2002, support for Mathcad 7 and older versions, including the Apple Mac v.6, will be discontinued. It's understandable that Mathsoft Engineering & Education is now under commercial pressure to become 'leaner and meaner' by dropping unprofitable lines and activities. But many users who stuck with older versions, put off by a somewhat buggy v.8, may see this as arm-twisting to force them to buy, or upgrade to, 2001i.

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