Fun fact!

Microsoft Office has two internal math formats, one of them is Ecma Math[0], the other the other is the "Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics"[1], it is a Unicode standard and uses only Unicode standard characters. It has the unfortunate property of being hard to type on its own (the integral character isn't on most people's keyboards), but it is pretty easy to read as just plain text. If you copy an equation out of Word you'll get something like this: ∫(x^2/2)

[0] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/10/06/mathml-a...

[1] http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf

Disclaimer: I work @Microsoft improving on some math features, and we are the main implementors of the spec. Which makes me sad, since it is an open spec and it is really powerful!

Funny that it's not ∫(x²/2), though!

OK, I went and looked at the standard and it seems like they're thought about this: they allow input as either ∫(x²/2) or ∫(x^2/2) but they apparently output as ∫(x^2/2) because it's more general and editable, like if you wanted to change the exponent to something that didn't have a predefined Unicode superscript.

I like that, except I prefer "un-necessary" parenthesis to be explicit about the ordering of operations.

Thus assume only + - and * / are unambiguous, everything else be explicit about ordering.

EG: ∫((x^2)/2)

It's alright, somebody has to do it first. Though you shouldn't be surprised that a specification written by an employee at Microsoft is still primarily implemented at Microsoft.

Maybe it could be integrated into the Unicode shaper (HarfBuzz/Uniscribe/AAT) with a language code for "maths".

Since you're here, is something like that relatively easy to use in a UWP application? I have an idea for a chemistry app and am looking for a good way to show formulas.

> Since you're here, is something like that relatively easy to use in a UWP application? I have an idea for a chemistry app and am looking for a good way to show formulas.

Unfortunately not! I am wondering if I should make requests to the Windows team internally, the Managed wrapper class they ship has the math features compiled out. :( I'm in Office, where we use an internal UWP safe C++ version of Rich Edit. We bundle it with our AppX and load it up like any other C++ DLL.

So in other words I shouldn't hold my breath for this to appear on NuGet. That's a shame. It seems like it would play nicely with MarkDown.

I fired off an email to the team responsible. :)

Please post over on https://wpdev.uservoice.com/ and get others to upvote! If internal and external asks line up, it becomes much easier to argue in favor of doing a feature.

Ugh ugh ugh no.

Storytime. A couple years ago, I was in the midst of copyedits on a book with a bunch of math in it. The copyeditors were using a different version of Word.

When they sent the edits back to me, the math was gone. Completely.

Not only that, but when I tried to copy-paste the math in from a prior draft, the Word file refused to save.

Eventually, I had to reconstruct every one of the damn things, by hand.

(Happy consequence: I caught and corrected an error doing so. But still!)

That would never happen in a plain text format. And this was the experience that made me abandon word processors for good.

"What You See Is Not What Others Get"

Well, one advantage of OneDrive is you have full history.

Then try AsciiMath[0]. It does a fine job of representing math as plain-text, and I find it far more sane than LaTeX for my typical use cases.

LaTeX:

    \begin{bmatrix}
        0 & 1 \\
        1 & 0 \\
    \end{bmatrix}

AsciiMath:

    [[0,1], [1,0]]

[0]: http://asciimath.org/

Neat! I wonder if asciimath could be extended to an "intermediate form". Just like how there are two forms of MarkDown, there's the easy to type

    # this is a header

and the more elaborate

    this is a header
    ================

which conveys more "headerness" and is more readable than the first.

the same could be done with something like ASCIIMath, where a plain-Unicode representation could be an intermediate form between ASCII and MathML. Why? Because keyboards don't type in Unicode, but you don't want to be storing only the final output - storing an intermediate Unicode form seems best, assuming you can keep modifyign it using ASCII and then going ASCII + Unicode => Unicode.

Try Lyx. It's a front-end for LaTeX. It's UI for math notation is very similar to MS Word's. (IIRC - I used them about a decade apart.)

Something Overleaf [1] might help -- it's an online collaborative LaTeX editor with a rich text mode [2] to help make it easier for non-LaTeX users to collaborate on LaTeX docs. If you do use it, feedback would be appreciated -- I'm one of the founders :)

We also published a short post on 'the stoic resilience of the PDF within the digital ecosystem' recently [3], which seems relevant...although it's just a short background piece.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81

[3] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/509

> piss-poor experience of writing mathematical notation outside of MS Word

Mind blown. I only write a little math, and I can't imagine my first choice not being MathJax/LaTex in a plain text file.

I use Microsoft OneNote to take notes. The math notation is almost exactly the same as in LaTeX and you basically compile it on the fly with the spacebar. <ctrl>+'=' toggles math mode on and off from the Mac. There are some hiccups, especially with OneNote keeping track of fonts (in my experience) but you get used to them.

This is mostly a social problem, not technical. It's a shame, as MS Word has at best mediocre support for typesetting mathematics.