find and (sort of) replace graphics / equations Word 2004

[fogharty]

I have a bunch of documents with a large number of MathType equations
in them. I'm supposed to find each equation and put a series of
underscores next to it "________" Theis is due to a very messy
production process whereupon all the equations will be "lost". The
idea is that the underscores will serve as a place holder and the
equations can later be inserted by hand as gif files.

So is there anyway to do a Find graphic (^g) then Replace with the
same graphic, but include the underscores as well?

Find: ^g
Replace With: ^g___________

Possible?

 

[fogharty]

Ah, nevermind, I figured it out.

With wildcards turned on...

Find what: ^g
Replace with: ^& ___________

Where ^& is the contents of the Find what box

 

[Bob Mathews]

I have a bunch of documents with a large number of
MathType equations in them. I'm supposed to find each
equation and put a series of underscores next to it
"________" Theis is due to a very messy production
process whereupon all the equations will be "lost". The
idea is that the underscores will serve as a place holder
and the equations can later be inserted by hand as gif files.

If that's all the underscores will be used for, there's really no
need to do it as you describe. MathType will automate this
process for you. Well, the first half of it anyway. In Word 2004,
there's a MathType menu. Near the bottom of this menu is an
"Export Equations" command. Click it. Select a folder to receive
the GIFs, choose GIF as the file format, check the box labeled
"Replace equation with file name", and click OK. After the
conversion process finishes, all of the equations in the document
will have been saved as GIFs in the folder you specify. In the
document, each equation will have been replaced with something
like <<EQN01.gif>>. I don't know of a way to replace each of
these strings with the corresponding GIF; perhaps it can be done
with a macro.

Some other thoughts on this process:

1. Make sure the "File name pattern" will handle as many
equations as you have in your document. Each pound sign
represents a digit, so if you have more than 99 equations, you
need 3 pound signs*. You can put whatever text you want with the
pound signs, but there's a limit of 12 characters, including the
pound signs, so "Equation-###" would work, for example.

*With a single pound sign, the process will still work fine.
Instead of numbering Eqn001, Eqn002, etc., it'll number Eqn1,
Eqn2, ..., Eqn99, Eqn100, etc. Just a matter of preference
really.

2. If you want high-resolution GIFs, be sure to set your GIF
preferences in MathType before you perform the conversion process
outlined above.

3. As always, for a document-modifying process such as this, it's
good to work with a copy rather than the original. I'm sure this
is your practice already, but it bears mentioning anyway.

--
Bob Mathews
Director of Training
Design Science, Inc.
bobm at dessci.com
http://www.dessci.com/free.asp?free=news
FREE fully-functional 30-day evaluation of MathType 5
MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, MathFlow, Equation Editor, TeXaide

 

[fogharty]

Thanks Bob! I really don't know much about MathType.
Unfortunately for our process, this may not work, but it will come in
handy for the future.

Is there a way to update all the equations in a document to a new
format? Having the font be 12 pt instead of 10, for example?

We have this very convoluted process that was designed by one of our
programmers who no longer works in our department.
It involves taking Word docs and applying specific styles. Every
image, photo, graph, equation, etc. has at least three "styles"
applied to it, for example, image center for the image, then alt text,
then image file name. In a math course (such as the one I'm working
on) there might be 200-300 equations per chapter.

Our process is:

Word Docs with styles
Using Framemaker, the docs are converted to structered format, then
output as xml
The xml files have several PERL scripts run (at least 6) to convert
the content for use on the web
Then we go back to the xml docs in Framemaker and output them as fm
docs to produce a print version of the content, running a few
Applescripts along the way.

If <b>one</b> character is stylized wrong, the whole process breaks
down. And the resulting web and print products still need a lot of
format cleanup by hand before they are done.

That's the quick overview of this thing. It's very convoluted and
messy, and we are tied to it, because if we don't use this process,
the two years the programmer took to come up with it "will have been
wasted."

I would like to be able to output directly from Word to the web, but
no one wants to do that because it produces, supposedly, "garbage
code." I don't know enough about the web side to say if that is so or
not.

Anyway, that's what we do.

Thanks again for the advice on MathType.

 

[Bob Mathews]

Hi "fog",

Actually, you may think your production process is pretty
convoluted, but it's not that uncommon in publishing for each
company to have their own proprietary convoluted process. None of
them make much sense except to the company doing it. ;-)

Is there a way to update all the equations in a document to
a new format? Having the font be 12 pt instead of 10, for
example?

Yes. In that MathType menu in Word that I mentioned before,
that's what the Format Equations command is for. You can either
select a range of equations to format or choose "whole document".
The best way (IMO) to use this command is to first save a
"preference file", then when you choose the Format Equations
command, you can format the equations based on this preference
file. You can find out about preference files in the MathType
User Manual. If you don't have a hard copy of the manual, there's
a PDF version on your computer at

Macintosh HD: Applications: MathType 5: MathType 5 Manual.

Even if you do have a hard copy, the PDF is good because it's a
lot easier to search a PDF than it is a book.

I would like to be able to output directly from Word to the
web, but no one wants to do that because it produces,
supposedly, "garbage code." I don't know enough about the
web side to say if that is so or not.

Right. Word does add a bunch of code that's unnecessary in order
to view the page on the web, but it's necessary in the sense that
if you want to edit the page in Word, Word uses the code in order
to properly display and format the page. As an aside, if you have
access to Dreamweaver, there's a command to "Clean up Word HTML"
that actually does a pretty good job. If you use that command of
course, you won't be able to edit the file in Word any more.

--
Bob Mathews
Director of Training
Design Science, Inc.
bobm at dessci.com
http://www.dessci.com/free.asp?free=news
FREE fully-functional 30-day evaluation of MathType 5
MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, MathFlow, Equation Editor, TeXaide

 

[John McGhie]

{Giggle} I remember those agonising "Create in Word, export to FrameMaker,
fiddle around, hold your mouth the right way and if the wind is from the
North you will get a finished document" kind of processes.

I too have suffered from them

These days I:

1) Print the document
2) Save as Web Page (filtered)
3) Move the HTML version to the web server.

Saves a lot of time and money, and none of the users/customers can tell the
difference

If you are interested, I will share with you the business justifications I
use to counter the religious zealots who will offer a variety of excuses why
"you can't publish from Word" I can, I do, and I get paid for it

Cheers

Thanks Bob! I really don't know much about MathType.
Unfortunately for our process, this may not work, but it will come in
handy for the future.

Is there a way to update all the equations in a document to a new
format? Having the font be 12 pt instead of 10, for example?

We have this very convoluted process that was designed by one of our
programmers who no longer works in our department.
It involves taking Word docs and applying specific styles. Every
image, photo, graph, equation, etc. has at least three "styles"
applied to it, for example, image center for the image, then alt text,
then image file name. In a math course (such as the one I'm working
on) there might be 200-300 equations per chapter.

Our process is:

Word Docs with styles
Using Framemaker, the docs are converted to structered format, then
output as xml
The xml files have several PERL scripts run (at least 6) to convert
the content for use on the web
Then we go back to the xml docs in Framemaker and output them as fm
docs to produce a print version of the content, running a few
Applescripts along the way.

If <b>one</b> character is stylized wrong, the whole process breaks
down. And the resulting web and print products still need a lot of
format cleanup by hand before they are done.

That's the quick overview of this thing. It's very convoluted and
messy, and we are tied to it, because if we don't use this process,
the two years the programmer took to come up with it "will have been
wasted."

I would like to be able to output directly from Word to the web, but
no one wants to do that because it produces, supposedly, "garbage
code." I don't know enough about the web side to say if that is so or
not.

Anyway, that's what we do.

Thanks again for the advice on MathType.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]