'Paste special' (as png/gif) with equation or Word drawing objects

[Harvey]

I'm dealing with a problem where I need to convert equation objects and Word
drawing objects to gif files. I know this can probably be done through other
means, but I need to do it either using either Word's 'Paste Special' option
or 'Save as HTML' option. Both of these methods result in a poor quality
image that is fuzzy, distorted, and rather bad looking. I can post example
images if needed. If I paste as a bitmap it looks ok, but that doesn't work
with what I need.

I'm currently working with Office XP on Windows Vista. I've had this
working on Office XP and Windows 2000 in the past, though I don't know if the
issue is with a setting on the computer or something inherent to the versions
of Office and/or Windows.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

- Dan

 

[Bob Mathews]

I'm not sure why you "need to do it either using either Word's 'Paste
Special' option or 'Save as HTML' option", but MathType has 2
different solutions to your problem. If your "need to" isn't really an
absolute, MathType offers an "Export Equations" command that will
convert every equation in the document to GIF. It doesn't matter how
the equation was created -- Microsoft Equation 3.0, MathType, or EQ
fields -- MathType will convert them to images. The other option is
"Publish to MathPage", which is similar to "Save as HTML", but gives
much better output and creates better equation images.

--
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

 

[Harvey]

Bob -

Thanks for your quick reply!

My need is unfortunately absolute though I wish it were otherwise. I'm
using Word and Mathtype along with other software to produce technical
documentation (both PDF and HTML) and in order to preserve the editable
nature of the equations in my source documents it's necessary to be able to
create GIF/PNG images of equations on the fly while building my outputs.

Do you know how exactly Word converts these objects to GIF/PNG files? I've
been able to get good output on some computers but not on others and I can't
find a clear correlation as to why some work and others don't.

Any ideas?

- Dan