
Apple Pages 6.1 adds equation support using LaTeX or MathML - plg
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT207569
======
comex
From the "which commands" link, it seems that they're using Blahtex to convert
LaTeX to MathML:

[http://gva.noekeon.org/blahtexml/](http://gva.noekeon.org/blahtexml/)

Neat feature. I think I might get a lot of use out of it as a "lighter-weight"
way to write up documents that include math, using the nice LaTeX syntax,
while still keeping the document as a whole WYSIWYG (better for graphics and
makes it easier to avoid going back afterward for a fixing-up step). Plus, I
can edit from both my Mac and iPhone with automatic sync. (There are existing
LaTeX apps for iOS that can do that too, but this seems to be a solid option.)

Edit2: Tried it out on iOS. Two limitations: equations can't wrap across
lines, and inserting a new equation requires a few taps - not super cumbersome
but enough to discourage a "fluent" style of frequently going in and out of
math mode within a sentence. Still useful.

~~~
behnamoh
Who does this sort of stuff on their iPhone really? Even when they want to
demonstrate a nice feature of an app that was originally for Mac, they show it
on an iPhone...

It's a shame that Mac is getting forgotten :(

~~~
nosborn
It's also available in the Mac version of Pages.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pages/id361309726](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pages/id361309726)

ETA: link

~~~
behnamoh
I know it's available on Mac too. But why use an iPhone image (in the link)? I
mean, isn't this sort of stuff originally for Mac?

------
amichail
As always, check out TeXmacs, which does this sort of thing best:

[http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/screenshots.en.html](http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/screenshots.en.html)

[https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/tool-
tips-b207992c90c046bdbe...](https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/tool-
tips-b207992c90c046bdbe4053cbdf88b5d5) [mind map]

[https://www.gnu.org/ghm/2013/paris/slides/texmacs--
poulain--...](https://www.gnu.org/ghm/2013/paris/slides/texmacs--poulain--
ghm-2013.pdf) [pdf]

~~~
013a
Doing one thing better and a thousand things worse does not make the product a
worthy alternative in most use cases.

~~~
amichail
At the very least, TeXmacs is ideal for doing math assignments.

------
theCricketer
Nice.

I use Dropbox Paper to take math notes, and it works great with math formulas
and Latex support. You get sharable Paper documents, downloadable as MS Word
docs and Dropbox paper overall feels light, fast and minimalistic.

The only thing I'd improve about Paper's Latex support is to add some
autocomplete features that make it faster to type out Latex and a couple of
minor bugs, like the incomplete Latex disappearing when you switch tabs.

~~~
jtraffic
Wow. I did not read this carefully enough the first time:
[https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/9173](https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/9173)

I had no idea that Dropbox Paper supported Latex until reading your comment.
That makes Paper even more awesome.

------
JohnHammersley
You might also want to give Overleaf[1] a try if you're interested using LaTeX
in a more WYSIWYG style -- we have a rich text mode[2] (currently in beta)
that parses the LaTeX and presents it in a way that's more familiar for non-
LaTeX users, which makes it particularly handy for collaborations. Of course,
you can always edit the underlying LaTeX directly if you prefer :)

I'm one of the founders of Overleaf, so if you have any questions (or if you
use it and have any feedback), please let me know -- it's always appreciated,
thanks.

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

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

~~~
johnsonjo
I used overleaf to collaborate with my group in my Discrete mathematics class
last semester. The other collaborators didn't even have to create an account.
It was super useful. Thanks for the great app!

------
pbnjay
I hope this is in the latest Keynote or coming very soon - it's my biggest
issue right now when prepping slides for my classes.

~~~
rchowe
I found that using the LaTeXiT app that comes with the MacTex distribution is
pretty easy; it offers drag-and-drop of an image into Keynote / Pages.

~~~
kccqzy
Perhaps more important is the ability to drag-and-drop a rendered equation
from Keynote back to LaTeXiT and still be able to edit it. Pleasantly
surprised when I discovered this feature.

~~~
jfoldager
I did not know this! Fantastic. Thanks a lot.

------
kweinber
In my dreamlife, Apple decides to support the LibreOffice format and uses that
as the default for the Pages, Keynote, and Numbers formats. For features that
they need added to support features, they propose them to the standards body.

That way they become the best editor of a free format. I can't ever see them
going head-to-head with Microsoft so this would really open up their
marketshare.

------
lutusp
I'm looking forward to the day when browsers support LaTeX content without any
special plugins or libraries. Until then I use server-side MathJax to support
my site's technical pages. MathJax is a terrific piece of software, but its
popularity is an implicit argument for a generic browser feature that does the
same thing.

If that became the norm, I could switch to LaTeX right now and HN readers
would see a result any mathematically literate person would hope for.

For a while Reddit supported a plugin that rendered LaTeX by way of an
external server called "CodeCogs." Eventually CodeCogs realized they were
being exploited with no compensating gain, so they blocked all Reddit
accesses.

Here's a concise definition of pi --

\displaystyle \pi = 2 \int_{-1}^1 \sqrt{1-x^2} dx

\-- I mean, if only you could see it. Here's how e is formally defined:

\displaystyle e = \lim_{n\to\infty} (1+\frac{1}{n})^n

I've been suggesting this for longer than I can remember. Meanwhile, here's my
online LaTeX editor:

[https://arachnoid.com/latex/](https://arachnoid.com/latex/)

~~~
JadeNB
> I'm looking forward to the day when browsers support LaTeX content without
> any special plugins or libraries.

As a mathematician who appreciates cheap'n'easy (pseudo-)LaTeX availability
on, for example, MathOverflow, I totally disagree with this. Browsers are big
enough already. It's easy for me to install the libraries to view what I need;
why make everyone else pay the cost for it? (My argument is inherently
selfish: I don't want other content specialists to insist that my browser have
built-in capabilities to deal with all their professional needs.)

~~~
lutusp
Fair enough, your position has merit -- browsers really are very large,
getting larger, and not in a way that necessarily benefits the average user.
My website uses MathJax on the server side to get around this problem
(example:
[https://arachnoid.com/NormalDistribution/](https://arachnoid.com/NormalDistribution/)),
most publishers of mathematical content can use this approach.

And for discussion fora, as you mention, users can install a plugin to make
Latex render correctly in this specialized environment.

> ... why make everyone else pay the cost for it?

I agree, I should have thought through my earlier position more carefully.

------
mavam
Reminds me of a cooked-in version of LaTeXiT [1], a utility I find invaluable
when it comes to combining figure drawing (e.g., with OmniGraffle) and LaTeX
annotations of arbitrary complexity.

[1] [http://chachatelier.fr/latexit](http://chachatelier.fr/latexit)

~~~
btbytes
What does "cooked-in" mean in this context. Never heard of this expression
before ;)

~~~
nsomaru
Would suggest that the more common idiom is 'baked in'

------
k_bx
Slightly offtopic, but for everyone interested please also check out Typora
[https://www.typora.io/](https://www.typora.io/) . Such a great Markdown
editor with support of TeX inline blocks.

------
djrogers
Honestly I'm more excited about the ability to replace all fonts in a document
- especially in keynote. You have no idea how often I get a presentation to
deliver or tweak that has 7 different Arial and Helvetica-like fonts in it,
because each person that wrote slides for it used a different font. Drives me
batty!

~~~
kccqzy
This problem has been solved through the use of style sheets. Just define a
single paragraph style and apply it everywhere. Unfortunately most people
didn't seem to know this feature.

~~~
djrogers
99% of keynote isn't made up of paragraphs though. You've got 9 types of
titles, eleventy hundred bullet poont types, and various other headings
styles.

Setting that aside, it's the 'apply it everywhere' part that blows when you
have slides dragged in to one preso from a dozen different authors, some of
whom use fonts that you do t even have.

------
jacobp100
Does anybody know what they’re using to render the equations? I know that
WebKit has MathML support, so maybe they’re using parts of that codebase? It
would be neat if they released some APIs in iOS/macOS.

~~~
hokua_software
I think its MathML webkit rendering, with the LaTex being translated to MathML

~~~
nikdaheratik
They've had this support out for iBooks Author for at least a year, and I'm
sure you're right about using WebKit. Adding it to iOS is a pretty nice
feature though.

------
peterarmstrong
The best thing about this is that it's an admission that some aspects of a
document are better when authored as plain text.

Now, I'm of the opinion that this is actually true of the _entire_ document,
especially when it's a book. This is why we're creating Markua as an open
spec: [https://leanpub.com/markua/read](https://leanpub.com/markua/read)

------
0xCMP
A great tool I love has this too [0]. They're an improvement over Workflowy
which includes LaTeX support among other things.

I'm a very happy paying user of it although I do not use the LaTeX features
very often yet I have some finance notes I took in Emacs which transferred
over pretty well.

[0]: [http://dynalist.io/](http://dynalist.io/)

------
tzs
Note: desktop version requires 10.12 (Sierra) or later.

Looks like the end of my days as a Mac user is in sight. Apple does not
support 10.12 on either of my desktop Macs (2008 Mac Pro and 2009 Mac Pro),
and I don't see anything in their current desktop lineup that is an acceptable
replacement.

------
jmnicholson
Authorea fully supports LaTeX and MathML with a WYSIWYG interface like GDocs,
Paper, or Word.

[https://www.authorea.com/product](https://www.authorea.com/product)

------
santaclaus
Is LaTeX support going to come to Messages?

------
nodesocket
I'm interested in the new real-time stock quotes available in Numbers. Anybody
tried to use that feature?

~~~
nodesocket
Just tried it and seems to work nicely. Looks like $AAPL partnered with Yahoo
for the data. I wish Apple would get into the finance game. Google Finance and
Yahoo Finance are really not very good.

[http://pasteboard.co/OzOlLndbg.png](http://pasteboard.co/OzOlLndbg.png)

------
murkle
re [https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202501](https://support.apple.com/en-
gb/HT202501)

What do \lvertneq, \gvertneq do? I can't find an online reference for them

------
plg
doesn't work on online version of Pages (iCloud), no way to insert an equation

equations created on desktop version show up in online-version as low-res
jaggedy bitmaps, un-editable and un-pretty

so much for vertically integrated "just works" approach

disappointing

~~~
fnordsensei
The collaboration through iCloud stuff is great for the features it supports,
but it seems to be very much beta at the moment.

------
leecarraher
latex in a document editor, holy smokes batman, how do they come up with these
crazy ideas!

------
cmurf
Is it still using a proprietary format that isn't documented and nothing else
can read; so that there is no such thing as "one day I decided to use
something different and still want to read _my_ documents"?

~~~
Tanegashima
The file is a zip and contains a PDF of the full document in case that
happens.

------
cozzyd
I believe both Scribus and LibreOffice have had ways of doing embeded LaTeX
for at least 10 years.

~~~
jernfrost
Sigh... people just don't get good software design. Doesn't matter how meany
features your software has if it sucks. Better with less but properly
implemented features.

Sorry but you got to suffer Stockholm Syndrome or possibly only used MS Word
if you think LibreOffice is nice to use. Try doing any kind of layout work in
both LibreOffice and Apple Pages, and tell me with a straight face that you
prefer LibreOffice.

I don't use word processors a lot. I usually write using Ulysses and sometimes
LaTeX, but if I need a word processor it is because I need a lot of visual
control which you don't get when writing latex or markdown. Pages is awesome
in this regard, while LibreOffice frankly has little of interest.

Both LibreOffice and Scribus are stuck in the Windows98 era user interface
paradigm and haven't moved onwards. A lot has happened since then.

It is an unfortunate sad reality of open source software. One just ads one
feature after the other indefinitely with little attention to detail or
overall design and usability.

Here is a little anecdote. A colleague struggled with figuring out how to do
something in Excel. Software he had used casually for years. I suggested, try
Numbers instead. He had no experience with it. But I knew that it has way
better thought out UI. In 3 minutes he had figured out how to do what he had
wanted, after wasting and hour trying to figure out how to do it in Excel.
That is what good UI design means. Features are pointless if people can't use
them.

~~~
pjmlp
> Features are pointless if people can't use them.

Recently I watched a Microsoft presentation where they state that the many
developers keep asking for features that are actually already in Visual Studio
for several versions.

One case where they tried to improve this was to make a little clickable arrow
on VS 2017 to make "run to cursor" more visible, a feature that is there
almost since the early days, but requires the use of toolbar or context menu.

------
felippee
Took them only like what - 10 years? Better late then never I suppose.

~~~
savoytruffle
The older version of the iWork apps (which they eventually abandoned in favor
of unifying the Mac and iOS versions) used to support LaTeX and MathML via an
external 3rd party app. Circa 2010-ish I think

