StarOffice/OpenOffice Math Equations to MS Word, PDF, LaTeX, and XHTML (FAILURES)

Submitted by dig on Tue, 2007-07-10 18:19.

StarOffice/OpenOffice Math Equations to MS Word

Well after yesterdays successful construction of equations for a manuscript, I was interested in how well the equations would convert to a MS Word document. StarOffice 8 with patch 7 saving to Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP format gave mixed results.

When reviewing the results in Microsoft Office Word 2003 the 11 equations were all visible. Seven were absolutely acceptable. Four had issues. The four with issues were missing a component. The missing component was the quotient line written as "<?> over <?>". I do not detect differences in these equations code with the equations that were flawless. Hummmm.

 
A bad one

%epsilon_{(i,w)}={V_{w}-V_{p}} over {V_{p}}= {V_{w}} over {V_{p}-1}
 
A good one

%tau_{j,w}={C_{(j,w)}%rho_{w}} over {C_{(j,p)}%rho_{p}}{(%epsilon_{(i,w)}+1)-1}

 
I also exported to PDF and all the equations looked great.
 
I tried to export to LaTeX2e and the export produced a document that was readable with TeXMaker but did throw a fit about postscript specials upon DVI generation. I'll have to look at that later. JaHoooo.

StarOffice code

{bar m} _{(j,flux)}{}^{(g{}cm^{-2})}=%rho_{p}{{C_{(j,p)} over 100}} (int from{Z=0} to{Z=D_{(j,w)}-CF} {%tau_{(j,w)}}z)dz

write2latex code

${\bar{m}}_{(j,\mathit{flux})}{}^{(g\mathit{cm}^{-2})}=\rho
_{p}\frac{C_{(j,p)}}{100}(\int _{Z=0}^{Z=D_{(j,w)}-\mathit{CF}}{\tau
_{(j,w)}}z)\mathit{dz}$

write2latex healed code

${\bar{m}}_{(j,\mathit{flux})}{}^{(g\mathit{cm}^{-2})}=\rho
_{p}\frac{C_{(j,p)}}{100}(\int\limits _{Z=0}^{Z=D_{(j,w)}-\mathit{CF}}{\tau
_{(j,w)}}z)\mathit{dz}$

 
I then tried to export to XHTML and a document was generated sans the equations. So much for that.
 
I then chose to save as "HTML Document (StarOffice Writer) .html" and a document was generated with all equations converted to gif's as I expected.
 
This investigation is not over yet. The mystery of the missing quotient lines continues.

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