Re: [Groff] eqn plugin for MS Word??

[Frank Jahnke]

On Fri, 2007-08-10 at 17:54 +0100, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

> Have you considered Abiword instead?  Cross-platform.  Source available.
> Apparently it has an equation editor.
> 
>     http://www.abisource.com/
>     http://cleardefinition.com/oss/abi/blog/2006/09/13/equation-editor-links/
> 
> Never used it though.
> 

I stumbled on the math mode for Abiword just a few minutes ago.  
Interesting -- I'll have to try it.

In general I treat Abiword as "vi with minor formatting."  It is easy
enough to use, but it crashes with remarkable frequency when it
encounters something that it does not understand.  For example, I tried
to put in an umlaut character into a document.  I found no way to do it
in Abiword (and like most OSS software, the documentation is dreadful).
So I put it in using Word, and read it back into Abiword.  It crashed.

It also crashes when I read in my standard NIH Biosketch, which has only
tables, headers, footers and some text.

That's been all too common in my experience.

Still, it may be useful for the initial equation input.  I don't think
it is suited for a large document that contains math, chemistry, complex
figures and the like.  That's just not what it does well.

Thanks for looking, though.  I have to believe that what I'm trying to
do is rather common, particularly for publications with multiple
authors.  So I do think the discussion is useful.  Well, it is for me at
least!

Frank