14 DAY TRIAL // With the advent of the next iteration of the Office System, Microsoft will also kick up a notch the math features available via the components in the productivity suite. In this regard, users of OneNote 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Excel 2010, but also additional OfficeArt applications will notice that the math features have evolved in comparison to Office 2007. Murray Sargent, software development engineer in Microsoft Office, pointed out that responsible for this evolution was version 7.0 of RichEdit. “Specifically RichEdit is responsible for interfacing to the LineServices and Page/TableServices math handlers, the math font library, and for a significant part of the math user interface in those applications,” Sargent explained.
Version 6.0 of RichEdit shipped integrated in Office 2007, but also in the Encarta Math Calculator. Microsoft will not change the delivery method, and will, in this regard, make RichEdit 7.0 a part of Office 2010. According to Sargent, the Redmond company has focused on improving math editing/display for RichEdit 7.0, resulting in changes visible throughout Office 2010, for users that deal with math features.
“The RichEdit team also has spent considerable time working in the OfficeArt and mso (a large Office shared library) code bases, both for math implementation and for extending/maintaining OfficeArt text,” Sargent explained. “The latter is responsible for the text you see in PowerPoint and also in text boxes in Excel and in other Office applications except for Word. Word renders the text in its own text boxes and uses RichEdit only for dialogs and for the math linear format input method (formula autobuildup, manual buildup, and linearization). The RichEdit team spent a fair amount of time supporting the Windows 7 and WinCE versions of RichEdit.”
Sargent enumerated a range of additions introduced with version 7.0 of RichEdit 7.0: - MathML/OMML reader and writer (client access via TOM2); - RTF reader and writer math extensions; - Math paragraph (equation line breaking and alignment); - Extensive math keyboard UI to get parity with Word; - Math context menus (client access via TOM2); - Math template conversions (client access via TOM2); - Math zone handling for [shift]tab/enter, backspace (client access via TOM2); - Empty math zone place holder; - Additional linear format constructs to be described in Version 2 of linear format spec; - Horizontal rule; - Automatic recognition of telephone numbers, email addresses, file names, and URLs with spaces; - Myriad bug fixes (many involving combinations of math with other features, such as hyperlinks and BiDi).