Apple Adds Support for MathType and EndNote to Pages
Tucked away in Apple’s MacWorld keynote presentation was a little tidbit of particular interest to scientists. After years of waiting, our voices have finally been heard — Pages ‘09 includes support for MathType and EndNote.
From Apple’s site:
In Pages ’09, you can now create sophisticated equations for research papers, lab reports, and journal articles using MathType 6.1 Compose your equations with the MathType point-and-click equation editor and instantly add them to your Pages document. Pages also works with EndNote X2.1 Choose from over 3800 bibliographic styles supported by EndNote X2 and easily insert citations into your Pages document.
This is certainly a welcome addition, and will make Pages a much more attractive prospect for writing scientific literature. Hopefully Apple will also open the app to other third party developers, but I am not holding my breath.
Comments
And Error Bars too!
I also noted that error bars are now supported in graphs! Yahoo.
Small Favors
I suppose I shouldn't complain about small favors, but that's pretty much what the MathType story is about. Admittedly, I haven't used MathType much or even looked at it in a few years, but the reason is that it's not very good. Other programs (MathEQ and MathMagic) produce more refined typesetting.
The Apple video showing how to use MathType in Pages seems to indicate that MathType has a special status and that others are not included. The video also demonstrates MathType's hideous output and its use of UI widgets from early in the decade, indicating its cross-platform origins. Even with this, it would be a viable combination if only it were possible to automatically number equations and then update the numbering when equations are added or deleted. Is this possible using MathType?
Also, apparently the easy use of MathType is not extended to Keynote.
As for Pages, I'll bet there is _still_ no way to view documents without margins, a massive waste of valuable screen space. Someone please tell me I'm wrong. Also, I'd be interested to know if they have fixed the bug whereby Pages not only ignores the system setting for text antialiasing but reverts to an old-fashioned algorithm (shades of gray instead of color) that makes text rendering look embarrassingly bad.
Jerry
LinkBack
I don't care about MathType, MathMagic or EndNote. Writing that requires those is done in LaTeX, in other words: I hardly ever use Pages.
I do use Keynote ('06). Why this old version? Because there is a LinkBackplugin for it. This allows me to use the typographically beautiful LaTeX equation in my presentations. It (LaTeX) is a tool I'm familiar with, and works nicely with my other writing. And LaTeXiT with LinkBack makes editing a breeze. But apparently, Apple still suffers from the Not Inventer Here syndrome.
I guess I'll stick with '06 until LinkBack integration is confirmed.
Maarten
Keynote Equations
I had great luck with using Keynote and LaTeXiT for equations. The best part is using LinkBack or copying from Keynote and pasting into LaTeXiT to restore the equation for editing. This saved me a lot of work.
Personally, while I'm not a LaTeX expert, I found it much faster to brush up on a little LaTeX when I was setting 5-10+ equations per lecture. So the MathType or other support isn't a big deal for me in Pages or Keynote. I do echo your complaint about auto-numbering equations.
There's a free demo of iWork '09, so feel free to give it a spin and see if MathMagic and MathEQ work. I suspect much of the integration done using AppleScript.
As for real-estate, there's a full-screen editing mode in Pages now.
iWork '08 is fine for LinkBack
I've used LinkBack with Keynote from iWork '08. It still works great -- the update didn't break the LinkBack plugin.
I had small hopes that Apple would use LinkBack for the Numbers/Keynote integration. No luck, and Keynote '09 seems to break the LinkBack plugin. Hopefully there will be a LinkBack update soon.
EndNote and AppleScript
There's no EndNote update yet -- it requires EndNote X2.1, which hasn't been released. My hope is that EndNote will integrate with Pages via AppleScript.
Remember all the complaints about Office 2008 using AppleScript? Well, now EndNote supports AppleScript integration with Word. So if Pages integrates with EndNote via scripting, there's now a scripting bridge for third-party bibliography/reference tools.
That's something I've been anticipating for ... I dunno, 5-6 years at least!
Applescript Numbers
Interesting to see that they seem to have improved Applescript support in Pages, have they done anything about Numbers?
I agree about Linkback, why don't Apple just introduce it?
I wonder if there is an API
I wonder if there is an API to develop add-ons for other 3rd party apps. I'm thinking of things like Papers for managing citations.
In itself, compatibility with EndNote and MathType is not compelling, as they are both not very good at what they do. However, if this means that other apps can be made compatible, that's a good thing.
--
http://macinscience.com
Potential for other 3rd party plugins
The fact that you have to install MathType or EndNote before the menu items show up in Pages would seem to me to be evidence of some kind of a plugin API's existence.
On the other hand, the fact that neither MathType or EndNote has any advertisement of this new capability on their sites seems to indicate this was unilaterally developed by Apple.
I got really excited when Phil said something like "applications like MathType for inserting equations." Now it seems it may have just been a slip of the tongue.
MathType for Windows has a nice Latexi-esque feature where you can just type latex and convert it within the document back and forth (its the forth part where Latexit fails) between latex and the rendered equation. Something like that is what we really need.
Oh.. and numbering as everyone's already pointed out. Has anyone figured out any way to do numbering? Even something convoluted would be acceptable at this point...
Numbers has AppleScript Now
Yes, if you browse through Numbers with the Script Editor, you see some support. Unfortunately, I don't see any scripting pieces for automated charting. That's a shame.
answers to MathType questions
Since there were a number of such questions here, I thought I would try to answer them.
We at Design Science did work with Apple on making MathType and iWork '09 work together. However, Apple has a strict secrecy policy and does not provide beta software, even to us. This is why we don't have anything on our website about it. That will change very soon.
MathType integration works with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.
The implementation is not AppleScript based and, as far as I know, there is no generic plugin API. Nor is their a way for us to add additional math features to the iWork apps. It would be nice if we could add to Pages some of the features MathType adds to MS Word, such as equation numbering, export, etc. Of course, Apple themselves could provide such features. Here are places where Apple wants feedback:
Pages (http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html)
Keynote (http://www.apple.com/feedback/keynote.html)
Numbers (http://www.apple.com/feedback/numbers.html)
Paul Topping
Design Science, Inc.
Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, etc.
This might be of
This might be of interest
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8760736�
A solution for:-
I really like the new MathType support in Pages, but every time I create a new formula from Pages, the variables are "upright", instead of being italic. Is there a way to change this behavior?
Is crossreferences possible in Pages?
I welcome MathType integration in Pages, and an improved focus on integration of tools for scientist/students in the iWork packages. It seemed that the keynote specifically adressed scientist or at least college students, that might find iWork a worthy alternative to e.g. MS Office.
Especially, I find that the way Numbers divide the sheets into content elements to be truly helpful - and I would like any subelement (e.g. the sets of a chart, to also be subdivided such that it is possible to change linecolors without trying to find the line with the mouse).
However, as it seems, pages does not include any possibility for cross-referencig, such that Figures and Tables have to be labeled with Figure/Table X in textboxes (that furthermore has to be manually placed). And equation numbers (which is also a must for me as a scientist) also seems to miss.
I hope I am wrong on the cross reference issue. Especially, as iWork could be a really good alternative to MS office (which is a bit of a pain on intel macs) for many students. I cannot believe that cross-referencing can be any harder to do than the track changes feature - and I think that however much I like latex myself, it is always a hard case to convince ordinary students that this is the only proper choice).
However, if Apple wants to adress the scientific community (or just the academic community), they should get a couple of things right - which latex does to perfection - namely, bibliography, figure captions, equationn umbering, cross referencing - and preferable mathtype build directly into the product.
Why not Bookends or Sente?
I know that EndNote is still the behemoth of the reference management world, but I wonder why Apple didn't look at integration with Bookends, which has been available exclusively for the Mac for many years, or Sente, which I think is probably the interface leader right now.
Rick
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I think that Apple avoids
I think that Apple avoids any integration to stay as independent as possible and to know all the secrets of the products they produce only themselves.
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You can use MathType to add
You can use MathType to add equations to Apple iWork '09, Microsoft Word, ... Please contact the manufacturer directly for technical support and ... placement argent
I am not sure Apple will
I am not sure Apple will also open the app to other third party developers in the future. I have not gotten some info for this info.Anyway, definitely agree with what you stated. Your explanation was certainly the easiest to understand...Mortgage Calculator With Taxes