Maryanne wrote:
The geologists here produce their drafts in Word, and then I import the text into InDesign to do the final formatting. Some of them do mathematical equations using Word’s Equation Editor, and when I import their document into InDesign some of the characters do not come over properly.
Sigh. Yes. Everyone who typesets math wants there to be a seamless integration between Microsoft Word and InDesign. It would make life so much easier! But alas, I don’t think there are any easy solutions here. In fact, typesetting math often seems just as hard as doing the equations themselves. I’m going to throw out a few ideas, and then open the floor to see how other people have solved this problem.
First of all, the fact that Word’s equations import into InDesign at all amazes and terrifies me. I don’t do this, so I don’t know what kind of embedded object appears. But I have to say that I wouldn’t trust it for final high-quality printing.
In general, there tend to be two good ways to do math in InDesign, and both have their pros and cons.
Import As Graphic
First, you can save each equation as a separate image/picture and import it (using File > Place, like any other graphic) in InDesign. This is tedious and the management is tough, but it tends to work.
This is how we did the equations in my book, The Joy of Pi (using Design Science’s MathType to create the graphics, if I recall). The most annoying part of that whole project was finding out that the font changed in the book and realizing there was no way I was going to stay sane if I had to re-export all those equations. (I didn’t do the layout of that book; that was done by Maura Fadden Rosenthal. I just did the content.)
Create In InDesign
The second way to do it is to use an InDesign plug-in and do the math right on your page. The most popular plug-in for this is InMath, from ITIP. [InMath has been rebuilt from the ground up and is now called MathTools.] (Random note: They will be presenting two half-day seminars about typesetting math in InDesign at the Miami InDesign Conference in late February of this year.)
InMath is a very impressive and it’s awesome that it can typeset all that stuff right on the page (using paragraph styles, character styles, etc.), but (and I could be wrong here) I don’t think it imports equations from Word or any other system.
So what do you, the reader, use? Any clever ways to export as TeX and convert to something InDesign can import? What about methods for extracting Word’s equations and turning them into editable objects in InDesign?
Inquiring minds want to know!
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on January 5, 2008
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