News

• 15/11/2007: The web site of OOoLatex is currently redesigned...
The old site is available here.
• The old news are available here...

Introduction

OOoLatex is a set of macros designed to bring the power of LaTeX into OpenOffice. It contains two main modules: the first one, Equation, allows to insert LaTeX equations into Writer and Impress documents as png or emf images while the second one, Expand, can be used for simpler equations to expand LaTeX code into appropriated symbol characters and insert them as regular text.

With the module Equation, the equations are created and can be edited through an intuitive GUI while the information (including the latex code, the characters size and the equation type) is stored in the image attribute and saved in the file. It is thus possible to edit these equations later.

To use the module Equation you need a regular LaTeX and Ghostscript distribution to create and process the equation as well as some mathematical truetype fonts if used with the emf format.

On the other hand, the module Expand, has no other dependency than mathematical fonts use to expand the mathematical expressions.

The extension runs on various operating systems including Linux (intel/ppc), MacOSX (intel/ppc) and Windows in addition to MSys, a minimal Posix system for Windows.

Quick overview

After the installation of the extension, the OOoLatex tool bar can be used to access directly the modules of OOoLatex. Nevertheless, in the configuration window, specific shortcuts can be assigned to the module Equation and Expand.

The Equation module...

When the module Equation is called, the main window of the module appears. From this window two additionally windows can be called, one for the module configuration and an other to specify custom Latex preamble.
All this information can be saved into the OpenOffice configuration files, into the document (checked box Embed) or simply set for the current session.

Once the latex code is inserted, the image format and the code type selected, a tex file is generated when the button Latex is pressed and processed by latex to produce a postscript file. This file is then converted to png or emf and inserted into the document.

To edit an equation, simply select the equation and call the macro again.

The code type Display, Inline or Text is used to determine if the latex code is inserted between \[...\] (display math mode), between \$...\$ (inline math mode) or as regular latex code. The last one can be used to compile latex code in specific environment as eqnarray, align and so one...

When inserted in a Writer document, an equation of Inline type is inserted as a regular character in the text. The position of the base line is retrieved from the postscript bounding box to adjust the vertical position of the image. The equation follows thus the text when this one is modified around the image. Unfortunately in Impress, it is not possible to attach an image to a text layout. The inline equations are thus inserted as floating images.

The Expand module...

The module expand has been developed to insert simpler equation into text layouts by expanding them into symbol characters, according to basic Latex rules and commands. For example, subscript or upperscript commands are supported as well as commands like \tiny, \Large... The use of brackets allows to defined sub environments.

The Expand window allows to visualize the glyph associated to the latex commands, grouped into categories. The latex codes used to insert equations into the document are stored in a stack for the current session.

Expand or Equation...

The image on the left shows the same equation in a Writer document generated by the Expand versus the Equation module.

The slight different is due to the use of STIX fonts for the integral character with the Expand module compared to the Bakoma fonts used to generated the images with the module Equation.

Last update : 15/11/2007 [gpiroux]