microsoft word equation vertical alignment and display font sizeissue

[ion]

In Microsoft Word 2003, when I add a new inline equation into a large
word document (50+ pages with tables, equations), the equation
vertically aligns with text around it well, i.e., bottom aligned.

Overtime, this document grows so huge, that I'd like to either copy
paste the entire document into a new document, or save it as a new
document, to shrink the file size, and prevent frequent crash of word.
But either way, in the new document that I created, or saved as, all
equation now shows up slightly smaller than it is in the original
document, and it sits slightly higher than the text around it (when
looking at the bottom of the equation and the text).

If I double click the equation, going into edit mode, but don't make
any change and go back to word immediately, then the equation displays
normal again, i.e., the equation font now looks normal (same as it was
in the original document), and vertically align well with text around
it.

This is office 2003 professional on Windows 7. But I believe this
problem appears in multiple versions of word (2000, XP), and on both
Windows XP and 7.

 

[Bob Mathews]

The "size" issue is because the equation editor is not able to keep
styles separately for each equation, the way that MathType can. You
may be successful when inserting equations, to have them set to
several different font & size styles, but as you discovered, when you
save and reopen the document, it's not as you left it.

Copying a large Word document and pasting it into another is probably
not ever a good idea, even if the new document starts out as a blank
document. If you absolutely have to keep it as one document, there are
a few things you can do to reduce the file size, but you should give
primary consideration to making several smaller documents in place of
the large one. You've seen one problem that can arise with the
equations, but as a rule we don't recommend copying an equation from
one document and pasting into another (or even within the same one).
Actually that'll work out all right some of the time, and perhaps even
most of the time, but at some point Word will lose some of the OLE
information in the equation object (that's the information that tells
it the object came from Equation Editor). If that happens, you'll
probably not know it right away; you'll only discover it when you try
to edit the equation, but Word thinks it's a picture, and won't open
it up in Equation Editor. The way to prevent this is to copy the
equation, open Equation Editor as if you were going to create a new
equation, then paste the equation inside the equation editing space
and close Equation Editor.

None of these are perfect solutions, but keeping the document size
"small" to begin with is the closest you'll come to a perfect
solution. The definition of "small" all depends on how many objects
are in the document -- equations, pictures, charts, etc. -- and how
it's formatted.

--
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
MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor

 

[ion]

Thanks for your reply, Bob!

I didn't use any special font of format in the equation, all being
default. If even given that, word still cannot remember how it should
be displayed, then it seems like a bug.

It seems like an even worse bug if word would even lose memory about
the fact that this OLE object is an equation, instead of an image.

I was trying to shrink file size by copying and pasting into a new
file, or just save as a new file name, as I have read discussion where
some people claim that word file size grow large is usually due to
word trying to remember too much history/version etc, therefore saving
as a new file name, or copy past into a blank new document would
usually reduce the file size. This is in fact the case for me, except
that I experienced the equation size issue after that. But again, I
experience the same equation display size issue even if I just save
the file to a new file name. So I am not very convinced that the
equation display issue is due to copying and pasting into a new
document.

 

[Vladislav Yerokhin]

Hi Bob!

Help me please! How can I extract baseline information from MathType and Equation OLE objects? I read MathType SDK documentation section about extracting this information from WMF, but I can?t find how to extract baseline info from OLE objects.

Here is text from MathType SDK documentation:

Applications that support baseline positioning can process all objects at import/editing time by either scanning the metafile as described above or, if the object is an OLE object (Microsoft?s Object Linking and Embedding technology), performance may be increased by checking first to see if the object is a MathType/Equation Editor equation object.

Thanks for your answers.
Vladislav Erokhin




Bob Mathews wrote:

The "size" issue is because the equation editor is not able to keepstyles
01-Mar-10

The "size" issue is because the equation editor is not able to keep
styles separately for each equation, the way that MathType can. You
may be successful when inserting equations, to have them set to
several different font & size styles, but as you discovered, when you
save and reopen the document, it is not as you left it.

Copying a large Word document and pasting it into another is probably
not ever a good idea, even if the new document starts out as a blank
document. If you absolutely have to keep it as one document, there are
a few things you can do to reduce the file size, but you should give
primary consideration to making several smaller documents in place of
the large one. You've seen one problem that can arise with the
equations, but as a rule we do not recommend copying an equation from
one document and pasting into another (or even within the same one).
Actually that will work out all right some of the time, and perhaps even
most of the time, but at some point Word will lose some of the OLE
information in the equation object (that is the information that tells
it the object came from Equation Editor). If that happens, you will
probably not know it right away; you will only discover it when you try
to edit the equation, but Word thinks it is a picture, and will not open
it up in Equation Editor. The way to prevent this is to copy the
equation, open Equation Editor as if you were going to create a new
equation, then paste the equation inside the equation editing space
and close Equation Editor.

None of these are perfect solutions, but keeping the document size
"small" to begin with is the closest you will come to a perfect
solution. The definition of "small" all depends on how many objects
are in the document -- equations, pictures, charts, etc. -- and how
it is formatted.

--
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
MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor

On 28-Feb-2010, ion wrote:

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[Bob Mathews]

Hi Vladislav,

Hope these thoughts are of some help...

The MathType SDK includes a sample called "OLECont" that demonstrates
how to get the baseline info from an OLE object by enumerating the
embedded WMF. If you are working with equations that are being copied
to the clipboard, you can also use the function MTGetLastDimension to
retrieve the baseline. This function is described in the MathType API
documentation.

--
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
MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor

 

[Vladislav Yerokhin]

Thanks, Bob!
Your reply is helpful.

This approach is applicable only to MathType. This is approximately
75% of the formulas in our documents.
But we have formulas edited in Microsoft Equation.

I need to write a program that iterates on the formulas in the Word
document and sets vertical alignment to baseline.

How Microsoft Equation or MathType sends baseline information to Word
when equation editor updates formula?

 

[Bob Mathews]

Vladislav, in the SDK is a function named ConvertEquations. This will
convert the Equation Editor equations into MathType equations. If you
use this function, you'll be able to get the baseline info.

--
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
MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor