[texhax] MS Word to Mathtype

[William Adams]

On Dec 15, 2011, at 1:06 AM, cornwall_5 at comcast.net wrote:

> Dear TeX Support,
>  
> Your website
> http://www.tug.org/mailman/listinfo/texhax
> had no directly clickable email link.

Right, it's a page about an e-mail list, which ``support at tug.org'' aliases to.

> All the links at http://www.tug.org/interest.html for the FAQs led to unintelligible webpages. 

Arcane and difficult to understand I'll grant, but if you're patient, and start at the beginning, the material is quite intelligible.

> I do all my math documents in MS Word 2000 and Mathtype 6.0.
> I have used MS Word since 1990 and Mathtype by Design Science since 1997.
>  
> MS Word has a feature which converts the MS Word document along with all the embedded Mathtype
> images into a TeX or LaTeX document with the click of a single button.
>  
> I have no way of editing all this TeX code that is produced because I have no way of viewing it
> as a readable usable document, because TeX code is not WYSIWYG, apparently.
> (Yes, I can edit it in a text editor, but I have no idea what all that code means.)

You're almost half-way there --- the math equation stuff is well-suited to mathematicians and they pick it up easily w/ a few pointers (see below).

> Do you have a support group for people for whom we MS Word + Mathtype users can upload
> or email our MS Word + Mathtype documents to you and you'll send them back to us in TeX?

There's no such group just for such AFAIK. Your options include:

 - hire a consultant to do this: http://www.tug.org/consultants.html
 - hire a grad student or local technical typist to do this
 - import your document into LyX and use that, http://www.lyx.org
 - learn enough about LaTeX to be self-sufficient and able to do this for yourself.

I think you'd have more luck, and find the documents at:

http://tug.org/begin.html

to be more intelligible.

Esp. start w/ http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/

and if that confirms that you want to learn more you could install LaTeX and get a beginners book.

We can probably be more helpful if you'll explain why you're moving away from MS Word and MathType and what you hope / need to achieve.

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.