Curio and equations
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Occasionally we receive a question regarding how to put mathematical equations into Curio. We have a large number of students, professors, and scientists using Curio so this is something that tends to come up fairly frequently.
While Curio doesn't include a built-in equation editor, I did stumble across a nifty method using a program that is included with Mac OS X.
If you look in /Applications/Utilities you'll find an application called Grapher. Launch it and you'll find a shockingly sophisticated 2D and 3D equation editor and graphing program.
To enter equations the first tip is to use the Equation Palette (via the Window menu) - I couldn't get the little drop down in the equation bar to work reliably for me. There's also a good amount of information available via the Help menu.
Once you have entered your equation you can select the equation itself and copy it to the clipboard where it is stored as a PDF image.
Paste that PDF image into Curio and you have a perfectly rendered equation which can be scaled to any size while maintaining full legibility.
You can also graph your equation in Grapher, of course, and then copy that as PDF and place that into your Curio idea space, as well.
Enjoy Grapher and if I find any more complete documentation for it (it used to be called Curvus Pro and was purchased by Apple), I'll certainly post more information.
While Curio doesn't include a built-in equation editor, I did stumble across a nifty method using a program that is included with Mac OS X.If you look in /Applications/Utilities you'll find an application called Grapher. Launch it and you'll find a shockingly sophisticated 2D and 3D equation editor and graphing program.
To enter equations the first tip is to use the Equation Palette (via the Window menu) - I couldn't get the little drop down in the equation bar to work reliably for me. There's also a good amount of information available via the Help menu.
Once you have entered your equation you can select the equation itself and copy it to the clipboard where it is stored as a PDF image.
Paste that PDF image into Curio and you have a perfectly rendered equation which can be scaled to any size while maintaining full legibility.
You can also graph your equation in Grapher, of course, and then copy that as PDF and place that into your Curio idea space, as well.
Enjoy Grapher and if I find any more complete documentation for it (it used to be called Curvus Pro and was purchased by Apple), I'll certainly post more information.
Posted by George
6 Comments:
I'll check out Grapher, but so far I'm happy with LaTeXiT, a very nice freeware app by Pierre Chatelier. It turns LaTeX into PDF equations in a little window, from which you can drag and drop them into anything, including Curio. Resize them, add shadows or borders, whatever. And LaTeXiT has a library feature, so you can save your LaTeX snippets; it also has linkback, so you can click your equations in Curio to open them in LaTeXiT for editing.
By
James Anglin, at 9:20 AM
Excellent! Click here to learn more about LaTeXiT. According to his site it like he's working on some Leopard compatibility issues which will hopefully be resolved soon.
By
George, at 9:29 AM
I also use LaTeXiT to insert equations into my Curio documents. To avoid the compatibility issues with Leopard, I have actually been using a slightly older version of LaTeXit [1.14.3 (18th june 2007)].
By
wonton, at 9:34 AM
I've used LaTeXit with OmniGraffle and Keynote, and it works great (linkback included). I have not had the opportunity to use it with Curio yet, but that would be my first choice. (One feature I love: you can edit the preambule to include a macro file, so you can use the same macros as the technical paper you're writing.)
By
Alan Schmitt, at 6:58 PM
i'm using LaTeXiT, too (on Leopard!)... For a quick learning curve: you can right-click formulas from Grapher and select "Copy as Latex expression.." and insert it into LaTeXiT...
Curio and LaTeXiT are a great couple!
By
Anonymous, at 10:02 AM
I also find Lyx excellent for Math editing using GUI or LaTeX syntax. The resulting PDF obviosly drags/drops to Curio.
By
Anonymous, at 7:36 AM
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