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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Documenting kformula
From:       Alfredo Beaumont <alfredo.beaumont () gmail ! com>
Date:       2007-12-16 14:40:04
Message-ID: 200712161540.04947.alfredo.beaumont () gmail ! com
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Ig, 2007eko Aberen 16a(e)an, Luciano Montanaro(e)k idatzi zuen:
> 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?

The square marks where content should appear. E.g. if you insert a fraction, 
you'll get a square above the horizontal line, representing the numerator, 
and another one below, representing the denominator. You're right about the 
rest of your comments.

> 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

That's right, since kformula is unable to distinguish what do you call an 
identifier, you may have identifiers of more than one letter (sin, cos... or 
ax). The difference between italics/upright is defined in MathML spec and let 
you precisely distinguish visually if you are using a two letter identifier 
('ax') or two one letter identifier('a''x').


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