Aliased Equations in PPT2007

[Wigster]

Hi Everyone,

The equation editor in Word 2007 is great. The fact it's not part of PPT
2007 is completely strange, since I would have thought more people use
PPT with equations than Word, because of the easy availability of LaTeX.

I have been trying to figure out the best way of getting the equations
from Word to PPT by using paste special. Is it possible to paste the
equations in some form which ensures that anti-aliasing applies to them?
Right now if one uses any of the metafile formats, they equations end up
looking very jaggy. Here's a list of what can be done with problems:

1) Paste as HTML: get bitmap with some anti-aliasing around characters.
As a result can't paste on anything by white background. The quality is
bad anyway, unless use x2 font size in Word and shrink to 50% in PPT.

BUT: if your equation is too long, it will get wrapped around in the
copying process at a random point. It is not wrapped in Word. Any way to
stop this?

2) Paste as Enhanced Metafile: looks horrible and jaggy. If you select
edit picture, it gets converted to an office drawing resulting in pretty
good looking equations, but for some reason the font ends up looking as
if it were bold. Any way to fix this?

3) Paste as Windows Metafile: much more jaggy than EMF and converting to
office drawing does not help.

4) Paste as word object: you can edit it, but it looks horrible!

In summary: Is there a way to force anti-aliasing on metafile objects,
or at least to get the EMF>Office Drawing conversion process to not look
bold!

Thanks,

Wigster

 

[Echo S]

Do you have an option to paste as PNG?

 

[Wigster]

Do you have an option to paste as PNG?

I'm pretty sure that's what the "Paste as HTML" option does (or just
selecting crtl+V). The quality is really horrible, not even screen
resolution. You can blow the font up in Word and then shrink it back, but
then you get the random line-break symptom for longer equations.

Wigster

 

[Echo S]

I'm pretty sure that's what the "Paste as HTML" option does (or just
selecting crtl+V). The quality is really horrible, not even screen
resolution. You can blow the font up in Word and then shrink it back, but
then you get the random line-break symptom for longer equations.

No, paste as HTML isn't the same. If you have an option to Paste as PNG, I
would use that.

 

[Echo S]

Nevermind. I had 2007 open, so I just went ahead and tried it. There's no
PNG option when you Paste Special an equation from Word.

I think your summary as posted in the original thread is pretty accurate.

I thought maybe changing the Word page color to the same as PPT's and then
saving the Word file as HTML would give you images with the appropriate
background color, but it doesn't. The EE doesn't give you images with
transparent backgrounds, nor does it match the background the equation is
on. Bummer.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PPT 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/

I'm pretty sure that's what the "Paste as HTML" option does (or just
selecting crtl+V). The quality is really horrible, not even screen
resolution. You can blow the font up in Word and then shrink it back, but
then you get the random line-break symptom for longer equations.

No, paste as HTML isn't the same. If you have an option to Paste as PNG, I
would use that.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PPT 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/

 

[Wigster]

I have been trying to figure out the best way of getting the equations
from Word to PPT by using paste special. Is it possible to paste the
equations in some form which ensures that anti-aliasing applies to
them?

After playing around for a couple of days, I think I have found the
optimal way of transferring the Word 2007 equations to Powerpoint 2007.

* Type your equation into Word, set the font size appropriately, don't
worry about colour. I find it helpful to have a Landscape document of
the same size as the PPT page and I keep all my equations in the right
point size in a parallel Word doc of the same name as the PPT
presentation, so I can change them and repaste easily if I decide to
change something

* Select the whole equation and copy

* In PPT 2007, make sure nothing is selected on the slide, select Paste
Special on the Home tab

* Select Paste as Enhanced Merafile. This should paste a bad-looking
graphic into the centre of the slide.

* Right-click the equation, select Edit Picture. Click Yes. This will
convert the equation into something looking vaguely ok, but taking up
the full width of the slide

* Open the selection pane (Home/Select/Selection Pane). The equation
will now be a group of mostly Freeform objects. Delete the top rectangle
in the group (select and hit the delete key, it's some glitch positioned
at the end of the equation) and the bottom Autoshape (this is the big
box). The equation frame will now have a good size

* The equation looks a bit heavy compared to the rest of the text. With
the equation selected, go to Home/Drawing/Shape Outline and select No
Outline.

* You can change the colour of the equation and add effects just like
you would with any other drawn object. You can't edit the text, but you
can do it in the parallel Word doc as discussed in the first (*).

I am using the Cambria font for the main text font in my theme and the
Cambria Math equations look quite ok. In addition, if you want simple
inline equations, the Cambria Math font can be selected from
Insert/Symbol and contains glyphs not available in normal fonts (wacky
equality signs, etc.)

Hope this helps.

Wigster

 

[Bob Mathews]

I thought maybe changing the Word page color to the same as
PPT's and then saving the Word file as HTML would give you
images with the appropriate background color, but it doesn't.
The EE doesn't give you images with transparent backgrounds,
nor does it match the background the equation is on.

The method proposed today by Wigster sure seems like a lot of
trouble! MathType is easier, and it will work with PowerPoint
2007. There are two options:

1. Insert the equations as "equation objects". This will result
in the equation being a vector graphic that scales smoothly
(i.e., not a bitmap). Equation objects have transparent
background by default. Change the font and size through the
MathType menus, rather than dragging the corner of the equation
to re-size the equation.

2. Save the MathType equation as a GIF. Doing this will of course

result in a bitmap, but one technique I sometimes use is to save
it as a 384dpi GIF, then reduce the size to 25% of its original
size through the Format Object dialog in PPT. In the GIF
Preferences dialog (through the Preferences menu), you can set
the DPI setting, as well as the background color (transparent is
an option) and whether it's anti-aliased or not.

Regardless of which of the above options you choose, you can
color the equation directly within MathType with one or more
colors. If you have a dark background, you can use a light color
for the equation. You can also add highlight colors to draw
attention to part of an equation.

You can try MathType for 30 days via the link in my signature.

--
Bob Mathews bobm at dessci.com
Director of Training
http://www.dessci.com/free.asp?free=news
FREE fully-functional 30-day evaluation of MathType 5
Design Science, Inc. -- "How Science Communicates"
MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, MathFlow, Equation Editor, TeXaide

 

[Echo S]

Thanks for this. (And thanks to Bob for his information, too.) I'm sure it
will help others in future.

I guess we should have pointed you here. I forgot we had this, to tell the
truth. http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00832.htm . I think we probably need to add
some of this to it. (For example, we have information about getting
equations from Word, but we only discussed pasting special as a Word object,
but pasting as an image and ungrouping applies to those equations as well.)

 

[Wigster]

The method proposed today by Wigster sure seems like a lot of
trouble! MathType is easier, and it will work with PowerPoint
2007. There are two options:

I have to say that I find the layout that Mathtype does pretty ugly
compared to LaTeX. In PPT2003 I used to use TeX4PPT, which did a great job
integrating LaTeX, but it doesn't seem to work with 2007.

The Word equation editor is actually visually quite pleasing and the use of
effectively a LaTeX-like keyboard input is very good. Being able to get
that into PPT is an important improvement over MathType I think. But
Microsoft sure hasn't made it easy...

Wigster