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Smart Canvasses

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The Microsoft Math graphing calculator folks have created a Word 2007 add-in that lets you simplify, solve, calculate, and graph your equations in 2-D or 3-D. With it installed, your technical paper becomes alive. For example, your paper may have graphs of the formulae, but a reader wants graphs for different sets of parameters. She just right clicks on a formula and a context menu appears that includes options that Microsoft Math is able to perform on the formula. Select an option and a window appears with the results and offers the possibility to insert them into your Word document.

A side note is that the math displayed in the window is rendered by RichEdit. The math displayed in Word is rendered by Word. Of course, both programs use the LineServices math handler, so the rendering quality is almost identical.

This certainly isn’t the first time such a “smart canvas” was created with computational capabilities. Mathematica works in a similar way and offers considerably greater computational and graphical power. But it’s relatively specialized and expensive and the mathematical typography isn’t as good. Note that the approach used by Microsoft Math could be used by a Mathematica, MapleSoft, MathCad, etc., add–in, and hopefully such add–ins will be created. Then you could have the power of a Mathematica with the math typography and environment of Word 2007. It would be cool to generalize the approach so that any math engine could work seamlessly with a variety of Microsoft Office applications and Internet Explorer.

It’s very exciting. With the math add-in, students can learn math interactively as well as document their results using Word 2007. Professionals can carry out their R&D on screen in Word and ship off their publications as active documents. People reading the publications can click on formulas and obtain graphs for the scenarios they’re interested in or have steps in derivations filled in. Smart canvasses promise to revolutionize the way people learn mathematics as well as to streamline the production of technical results by professionals.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 02, 2007
    PingBack from http://www.absolutely-people-search.info/?p=2226

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2007
    I think this feature is great!  I already sent a little example document to two of my friends who were interested in computer math layout. As a tabletPC owner, I'm interested in handwriting input support for mathematics.  Is there any support for this in the product or on the horizon? Thanks for your awesome work!

  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2007
    I appreciate Microsoft's efforts on getting Math support into Office however I would request MS to take a look at this: http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/12608/1023/ and maybe release an out-of-band update that offers full complete native W3C MathML support in Word 2007 for both formats (DOC and DOCX) or least which automatically converts OMML to MathML when users save DOCX as DOC. I'm aware that one can convert using XSLT since both Math formats are XML-based, however, from a usability point of view, the current solution isn't very flexible and is greatly hampering adoption of Microsoft Word.

  • Anonymous
    December 11, 2007
    @someone http://blogs.msdn.com/murrays/archive/2007/06/13/getting-word-2007-technical-files-into-publisher-pipelines.aspx

  • Anonymous
    March 29, 2008
    One handy way to edit mathematical text is to use math context menus. These menus are displayed when