[OS X TeX] tex, pdf, and doc

[Victor Ivrii]

On 9/4/06, Bruno Voisin <bvoisin at mac.com> wrote:

> On a related note: it seems the next version of MS Office will
> recognize a TeX-like input method for maths. This has been brought to
> the attention of the XeTeX list by Adam Twardoch. See for example:
>
> <http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/2006-May/003700.html>
> <http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/2006-May/003703.html>
>
>  From the first message:
>
> > One interesting point is that Office 2007 includes a new set of
> > high-quality OpenType fonts from the Microsoft ClearType collection
> > (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/ClearType.html ):  Calibri,
> > Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel, as well as Segoe UI,
> > Microsoft's new user interface font. All the fonts include Latin,
> > Cyrillic and Greek characters with advanced typographic OpenType
> > features, some include characters from additional scripts.
> >
> > One highlight of Office 2007 is the new math typesetting engine in
> > Word.
> > It consists of the Cambria font that has a large mathematical
> > character
> > set, and a fully new "equation editor" which is seamlessly integrated
> > into new Office applications and allows mathematical input using
> > various
> > text encoding schemes, including a syntax very similar to TeX.



Pay attention on TeX-like. This means that in addition to M$-java and
M$-javascript  we will get M$-TeX, M$-LaTeX and so on and these new M$
TeX macros will pollute environment exactly in the same way.

>
> and from the second:
>
> > It is particularly relevant because Microsoft now implements math
> > typesetting entirely based on Unicode and MathML, and extended the
> > OpenType font format to implement math-related typographic features.
> > What Microsoft is doing is relevant, especially that this time,
> > they're
> > doing it "by the book", i.e.:
> > * the new math typesetting engine uses Unicode, which is an
> > international standard (ISO 10646)
> > * the new math typesetting engine uses MathML, which is an
> > international
> > standard from W3.org and XML-based
> > * the new math typesetting uses OpenType, which will soon be an
> > international standard (as ISO Open Font Format)
> > * the new Office 2007 altogether uses an XML-based file format
> > natively,
> > which is likely to become a standard soon (at ECMA)
> > * Microsofted consulted with Donald Knuth on the development of their
> > new math typesetting engine
> >
> > BTW, there is a paper that discusses some aspects of Office's new math
> > typesetting. The PDF is typeset using Microsoft Word 2007 itself, and
> > uses Cambria as the basic font:
> > http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath.pdf
> >
> > I'm not really a member of other TeX lists but you're free to
> > forward my
> > message to other lists that you think might be more appropriate.
>
> See especially the last referenced PDF document, which testifies
> that, contrary to what some (me included) used to think, MS is not
> necessarily evil and does pay attention to TeX and its user community.
>

Well, hyenas and vultures also pay attention. Do we want one?


> Bruno Voisin------------------------- Info --------------------------




>


-- 
========================
Victor Ivrii, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii
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