InReview: MathML Kit
This article appeared in Issue 121 of InDesign Magazine.Rudi Warttmann reviews a plug-in for adding math equations to your InDesign layout a minimum of hassle.
It may be a stereotype, but designers are not usually known for their love of math. Indeed, setting professional quality math equations in InDesign layouts is a tricky task, often left to specialists. But math can crop up anywhere. Textbooks, journal articles, technical papers, even newsletters and magazine articles occasionally include bits of complex math that need to be displayed with as much care as the rest of the typography. You could painstakingly arrange every number and symbol by hand, but there’s a much better solution: MathML. If you have access to MathML as part of the manuscript for a project, then adding equations to your InDesign layout will be far less of a hassle, with the help of a tool called MathML Kit from Scand, Ltd.
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Why MathML Kit is needed when you can simply place a PDF containing such formula into InDesign?
Looks like MathML isn’t the tool to make formula in InDesign directly.
MathML and PDF are significantly different things.
MathML is a markup language, like HTML, to formulate mathematical equations as pure text. If you want to see the equation as we are accustomed to see it, i.e. a fraction as a stack with a bar inbetween or a root as the radical with the root sign around, then you need a special software that reads and understands the MathML code and generates this depiction. One of these software packages is the MathML Kit.
If you’ve got the equation from somewhere else – let’s say from Mathematica, MathType or from any other specific software and this software is able to create a PDF with the equation for you, then you can of course just place this PDF into InDesign.
Hence, you’ll need the MathML Kit then and only then if you get the equations in MathML-coded text form.
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If you want to make equations within InDesign directly, then you need the plug-in “MathTools” from movemen.com.
Both MathML Kit and placing equations in whatever format does not give professional results. Just imagine one page with lots of inline equations and some displayed formulae. You have to manually adjust all vertical placement (and sometimes also the horizontal). I once did that for an article of about 30 pages. It had over 300 equations. Incredible task. Normally you would do this with TeX (or LaTeX). MathTools seems to be professional but if you only need this tool rarely a subscription model is total overkill.
I totally agree that both MathML Kit and placing equations do not bring professional results under all circumstances.
However, you queue in the the long line of nowadays people who claim highly professional specialized software, but are not even willing to pay a two-digit Euro amount for a 3-month subscription which should have been more than enough for a 30-page book with 300 equations.