Formulate and Formulix


Introduction
In the first article in this series, I looked at the cheapest, but hardest to master, method of dealing with equations. Now I want to turn to the add-on equation editing packages which rely on you already owning a wordprocessor capable of displaying pictures. If you don't want to learn and can't afford TechWriter, then you really only have three choices when it comes to technical documents: firstly you could persevere with your existing WP or DTP package and manipulate text frames within it, or you could try the two add-on programs available.

Formulate and Formulix
These are two applications for entering equations into wordprocessor or DTP documents. They don't provide any really sophisticated text handling functions themselves, rather you use them to create equations to include in Ovation, Impression, Fireworkz etc. These are output as (for example) Draw files, which are then handled as if they were pictures included in a document. Both Formulix and Formulate can achieve much the same sort of effect, but they go about it in very different ways, and with differing investments of time and money required for them. Formulate is PD software, written by Daniel Wagenaar, whilst Formulix is a commercial package marketed by Computer Concepts. I'm going to look at version 1·10 of Formulate and version 2·10 of Formulix when used with a variety of WP/DTP packages, but principally how they can enhance Ovation Pro.

Formulate
I got my copy by anonymous FTP from Hensa, and immediately ran into problems because it expects to find EFF's MathGreek font, which I didn't have. I contacted Daniel Wagenaar (the author) in Amsterdam by email, and he explained that this font is supplied with Impression, but can be substituted for another by mapping the characters shown in a Draw file included in Formulate. Unfortunately, if you don't have the right font you can't see the characters to make the substitution, and if you can see the file properly you don't actually need to make the substitution! A sprite file of this (or a Draw file with the font converted to a path) would definitely have been very helpful as well as the Draw file. Apparently someone has written a characters file using a PD font, but I was unable to get hold of that. Just as I was getting desperate, and about to buy the MathGreek font from EFF, I got a copy of Formulix to review, which provided the right font at last!

That Draw file then makes sense and provides much of the information needed to produce equations. In each column the first entry is the sequence of keystrokes to type into a text file, and the second entry is the character that Formulate will produce. Armed with this, it is possible to modify Formulate to use any other font (Sydney, for example, has a lot in common with MathGreek although many of the characters are mapped to different codes and some are missing). There is also a helpful manual provided in text and Impression formats (the latter fortunately readable with the versions of Impression Junior and Impression Style given away on some magazine CDs recently).

As an example of how to get output, type the following into a text editor:

 [($a +$ib)]^2  \\=  $a^2  +  2$aib 
+  [($ib )]^2 \\=  $a^2  `-  $b^2  +  2 $i $ab 

Dragging the text file to the Formulate icon on the icon bar produces a Draw file showing:

and

\I0;½@p]$x sin($x ) $dx  \\=  \H.} \.|`- $x cos($x )]_0^[½@p] ]\u=0]  `-  \I0;½@p]`-cos($x ) $dx
  \\=  \.|sin($x )]_0^[½@p]
  \\=  1

gives:

As you can see, it is possible to produce more than one line of maths at a time (which is something Formulix won't do easily), but there is no facility to automatically number equations; you have to do that manually. You can enter text as well, although the default spacing between "words" would need to be altered as they are normally printed very close together. I found that putting two spaces in between words gives something that looks OK with the maths, and after all you're hardly going to write a novel this way, only comment on equations. If you want to edit the output after placing it in your document, it isn't possible to get Formulate to read the Draw file back in, you have to modify the original text file (or tweak the Draw file in Draw itself!). That means it is advisable to keep copies of the text files in case you want to change some of the more complicated output later on, which can be a bit inconvenient.

Less than 300kb of disc space is needed, and only 64kb of RAM to run it in, so it's hardly a vast application, and does a competent job once you've learnt how to get it to do what you want. Certainly if you want a cheap add-on to an existing program, then do consider Formulate even if you have to buy the MathGreek font to get it to work.

Formulix
This is a completely different approach to the problem, and one that it is much easier to get to grips with. It's also a commercial application written by Thomas Goseburg and marketed by Computer Concepts. Formulix is a WYSIWYG equation editor, and can be used very effectively without reading the instruction manual. Naturally, you do need to resort to the manual from time to time, as it helps you to get the best out of the package, but unlike Formulate and , it isn't essential to do so before diving into using it. The package consists of a box containing a single floppy disc, a slim A5 booklet and a leaflet describing the differences between the current version and the older 2·0. It needs 544kb of WimpSlot to run in on my Risc PC, and takes 300kb of disc space, with about the same for the fonts (MathGreek, MathBest, MathLogic1, MathOpen and MathScrip1). Both MathGreek and MathOpen come in Bold, Italic and Bold Italic, with MathOpen adding Rounded characters in all these weights. The upshot of this is that you have sufficient fonts to produce just about any imaginable mathematical character. Features added in this version include horizontal and vertical kerning of characters or selections, improved quality and size control of brackets and braces, and extra buttons for font family and weight selection. The kerning control is lovely and means that you can move characters anywhere you like in the window. As an example of why you might want to do that, look at the following equation for a reaction in the solidification of a metallic alloy:

That is exactly as produced by Formulix, but doesn't look right: the prime over the gamma is too close to the letter. By moving the cursor to the correct place and pressing <Control> together with the cursor keys I can move the prime around so that it becomes an obviously separate character as below:

That looks a lot better, and much clearer. In fact this kerning allows any characters to be moved anywhere in the window, which can look very silly, but gives a considerable amount of flexibility to produce odd effects and compound characters such as combining two arrows to produce a double-headed diagonal one:

This can be rearranged within Formulix to give:

In more normal use, single lines of equations can be produced very easily with the minimum of trial and error. They can be numbered in up to four different alignments, and given captions and boxes by using one of the menus. The two main windows are shown below:

The large one is where all the work is done, and includes several regions of buttons for entering structures and symbols, Greek and mathematical characters, changing font emphases and file handling. Two really useful buttons are the "UnDo" and "ReDo" ones, which allow several levels (configurable from the Icon Bar menu). There are also "Cut", "Copy" and "Paste" buttons, and many of the things you would expect from a word processor, as well as the specialised equation editing features. The other window is the Palette, with buttons for the more common big operators (integrals, summation etc.), numerous sorts of brackets and accents, fractions and roots. There are also buttons for entering matrices and six more for macros. These allow you to build up a collection of useful combinations of symbols that you use regularly. There are already six defined, with room for another eighteen. They can be assigned to keypresses as well as buttons on the Palette, and the pre-defined ones include summation and limit expressions (see below), although they can be changed if they aren't to your needs. They can certainly save repeated typing of frequently used groups of characters.

If you have fonts of your own and want to include characters from them in expressions (e.g. cartographic symbols, Dingbat characters, etc.) then there's a way to do that as well. The Free Characters box allows you to set up a maximum of twelve characters with their own spacings in up to six fonts so that you can enter them with just two mouse clicks each.

Like everything else this is very well covered by the one line "Smart Help" (which can be turned off if desired) and Acorn's Interactive Help is also supported for longer explanations. The handling of brackets and braces is much more intelligent than previously, allowing them to grow with the expression without becoming distorted. An obvious example of this is a large matrix, where there are two types of simple brackets to choose from, although there seems to be a problem in the program such that the first one I've used below doesn't show up on the bracket palette, but clicking on the empty box still inserts it in the active frame. Computer Concepts are looking into this.

The same goes for operators like integral and summation signs which can also grow as the expression they are covering does.

Formulix is also capable of OLE (Object Linking and Embedding), so that if you have an application that supports this you can automatically send the output file back to it. That is done by double-clicking while holding <Control> down to send the equation back to Formulix. Impression also allows this (and Formulix was originally intended to work with it) as does Ovation Pro, but unfortunately some other applications, for example Fireworkz, do not. In this case you are in pretty much the same situation as with Formulate in that you really ought to save important files separately from the main document so that they can be edited later if necessary. With anything that allows you to OLE the output back to the creating application this is obviously not necessary.

There is a major limitation, in that you can only process one line at a time (unless you fiddle with turning matrices into multi-line equations and kern things around the place), and it can become tedious to produce lots of pages of properly aligned equations with Formulix. However for the odd equation here and there it is excellent, especially when used with an application like Ovation Pro or the Impression family that allows the formulae to OLE back to Formulix.

Conclusions
Both applications do their job, but there's no doubt which one is the easier to use: I'd far rather work with Formulix than Formulate. That's hardly fair though given the vast difference in price. Formulate is well worth a look at if Computer Concepts' price puts you off, and it is certainly better than struggling with Draw and lots of text boxes (I know, I've done that!). The cost of Formulix starts to look more attractive when you consider the fonts that come with it: indeed if you wanted a really good collection of mathematical fonts, you could do far worse than buy Formulix just for them. Of course, it is far more than a font package, and will be very useful in the preparation of any sort of equation, whether you are interested in maths, chemistry, physics, or any other branch of science. I wouldn't want to use either of them for really heavy technical documents though. Finally, the support I have had from the producers of each package has been excellent, with queries being answered very promptly by email. Daniel Wagenaar went out of his way to help me out when I was initially confused, and CC have done all I could have hoped for in answering questions.

Formulix costs £69 + VAT, and upgrades from earlier versions are £12·77 + VAT from Computer Concepts. Upgrades from the original Equasor cost £49 + VAT, again from Computer Concepts.


So Where Have We Got To?
Perhaps you're starting to see the way that my thoughts are taking me with the software I've worked through in this short series? The following sums things up so far:

The TechWriter one is expanded upon in the next article in the series.


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