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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: some suggestions regarding kformula source code
From:       Alfredo Beaumont <alfredo.beaumont () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-02-24 16:23:04
Message-ID: 200902241723.04813.alfredo.beaumont () gmail ! com
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Tuesday 24 February 2009(e)an, Boudewijn Rempt(e)k idatzi zuen:
> On Tuesday 24 February 2009, vivek kumar wrote:
> > In actuality, I have been trying to develop a full-fledged math editor
> > (something like the one that is provided with mathcad(
> > http://www.ptc.com/appserver/mkt/products/home.jsp?k=3901)) which can act
> > as a front end to other math engines like sage(http://www.sagemath.org).
> >
> > I want to make it a kde application.
> >
> > I really do not have much experience with either gui development or such
> > math editors. To that end I started searching the internet for any freely
> > available math editor. It seems surprising that I couldn't find one (on
> > linux).
> >
> > The closest that I could see was kformula, that helps me write the
> > formulas in  ways that I would actually write it on paper. This is one
> > part that I badly want for my editor. However, I had following confusion
> >
> > 1. Is it possible that the source code of kfromula can be modified
> > suitably to meet my ends?
>
> Depends... I guess it should be possible, though it might be hardish.
>
> > The highest priority changes for me are the following
> >
> > 1. The cursor can be placed anywhere in the editable area and I can start
> > typing from that point.
>
> That's the big trick, since kformula now works more like a wordprocessor,
> so you start on the left hand and go on adding more and more symbols. But
> it would be worth an investigation, and I'm sure the kformula source will
> have lots of useful things for you.

I don't really know MathCAD, so excuse me if I'm wrong, but I guess you want 
to build an application to do math calculations. If that's the case, kformula 
is not the best option. KFormula is an office application, and as Boud says, 
it works more like a wordprocessor. So the problem is not to put the cursos 
anywhere (KFormula is able to do so... or could do it easily), the main 
problem is that KFormula uses MathML's Presentation mode.

This means that KFormula doesn't really now anything about the semantics of 
formulas, (that is, it doesn't understand 'math'). It doesn't mean it's 
impossible to use it to do calculations, but MathML's Content mode is better 
suited for this purpose. Therefore, you may prefer to take a look at KAlgebra, 
which uses MathML's Content mode.

Cheers
-- 
Alfredo Beaumont Sainz
http://www.alfredobeaumont.org/blog.cgi
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