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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Documenting kformula
From:       Luciano Montanaro <mikelima () cirulla ! net>
Date:       2007-12-15 23:27:20
Message-ID: 200712160027.20464.mikelima () cirulla ! net
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Hi all,
I have talked over IRC with ingwa about my doubts about kformula, and I would 
like to help improve the documentation on how to use the formula editor.
So far, my experiments with kformula produced three bug reports:
154149, 154150 and 154155.

Anyway, I must say the manual as it is is not of great help in actually 
editing the formulas. I find the "Basics" section to be just confusing.

So, I'd like to write here what I think I have understood, and if somebody can 
confirm it or correct it, I'd like to put it in the documentation. I'm basing 
this on the current manual and kformula 1.6.3. 

When a new formula is created, kformula shows an empty square, which is 
underlined and contains a flashing cursor. (By the way, the current manual 
says the square is blue; this is true for kformula, but kword shows just a 
black square).

Here it would help if someone explained what's the meaning of these symbols.
I'm experimenting with kformula as I write, so excuse me if more questions and 
doubts pop up... 

As I understand, the cursor is where text and symbols will be inserted.
The square highlights the active "nesting?" level of the formula, and the 
underline highlights the current group of elements being "active". Am I far 
off mark?

Anyway. Typing in numbers does the expected action: the numbers are inserted 
in the formula. Typing a single letter inserts an italic letter: OK, it's a 
quantity. Its size does not seem to match that of the numbers, however. It 
looks quite a bit too small.

Typing a second letter however does not produce the expected result, the 
letters are converted to upright. Uh, maybe this is how you insert function 
names, like sin, log etc. OK. But typing an arrow-right after each letter 
lets me enter more symbols. So to enter a simple formula like y=ax I actually 
have to type:
 
y,=,a,->,x

Typing spaces or non-alphanumeric symbols is possible, but results in a 
garbled formula.

Well, still, with a bit of experimenting, formulas can be inserted with 
kformula; but I'm not sure I could explain how, or why the formula editor 
works like this.

Maybe it's just that I'm accustomed with TeX, and the visual way is different.

So I'm waiting for someone to illuminate me! :)

Thank you,
Luciano
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