Mathematical Characters (RR-785)

  • Hi people of the videoscribe family,

    As I could not stand the fact that getting expressions and equations in videoscribe is rather cumbersome, I wrote my own equation editor, which will output SVG file, ready for videoscribe. It took me more time then I expected, but the first version is ready to be used in my humble opinion. You can find the software at "https://sites.google.com/view/equationeditorsvg/homepage". To be honest I did not spend much time at making the reader, but can always be done. Attached is an example in mp4 fomat (smaller files).

    mp4
    (910 KB)
  • I haven't visited the link or tried the editor but that video looks very good!

     

  • Hello Otto, 


    Thanks for your input on this issue and for again spending your time creating something to help the wider community. 

    We've had a look and it does produce SVGs that work well in VideoScribe. None of us here at Sparkol are Mathematicians though so can't really put it through its paces in terms of the complexity of expressions and equations it can create. But this forum is full of people who will have lots of examples they would like to try so we will leave that to them and I am sure they would be happy to share their thoughts and feedback. 


    Just a note to anyone thinking of using this application the code for this is not written or controlled by Sparkol and you are linking to a website that is outside of our control to download an application. With that in mind please note the following regarding the link to https://sites.google.com/view/equationeditorsvg/homepage on this forum.

    Disclaimer: We like this software, and it has performed well during ordinary use, but we have not undertaken any in-depth testing and we have not checked it for the presence of malware or any potentially harmful behaviour, so you download and use it at your own risk and we do not accept any liability for any loss or damage it may cause. 


    Thanks 

    Barry

  • I use LaTeX and Beamer for all my face to face teaching presentations (in PDF). For online, I need something more dynamic that would allow me to draw equations that are displayed incrementally. Without this facility, I'm afraid that, cool though it is, I cannot use videoscribe.

  • Dear Dave, Do try my equation editor that produces svg for videoscribe. I wrote this program in Delphi, and I am working on importing latex files, but as I do this in free hours it takes some time (latex is rather large in possible commands for equations, and I like to cover a lot, if you have example latex files to test, I would be more than happy to recieve those). See the comment of Barry above on this program as well. Otto
  • Otto, your equation to svg editor is really a great step forward in building a much needed educational element to videoscribe, thank you! 

    While for now it may take some time for us Latex users to transcribe equations in your editor, my suggestion would be to:

    - expand the keyboard shortcuts for frequently used math notation (or even enable the user to set the shortcuts?)

    - implement a select & export option to enable sections of larger equations to be saved to svg


    Your efforts are very appreciated, many of us who work and teach technical topics will really benefit from this implementation. 


     

  • Thanks, Otto. Your equation editor has tons of potential and I really like the end result but I'm looking for something (which probably doesn't exist!) that can work from LaTeX code. I already have lots of LaTeX code that I would like to animate but don't have the time to redo them in a WYSIWYG editor. 


    I'm not being critical of your efforts, which are excellent; it just doesn't work for me.


    I am intrigued - how does your editor decide in which order to draw symbols and letters? Pretty cool, however it does it!


    Thanks again, Dave

  • Dave,

    the decision what how to draw is defined via de font editor. If you load a font, you will see that a character is defined by lines and splines. The order of drawing is the order as given in the curve list. So curve one is drawn first et cetera. As a user you can change that order (drag and drop in the curve list).

    The more complex characters, such as an integral sign, contains next to curves, holders. In usage the holders of the integral contain the limits and the body of the integral. The holders are also listed in the curve list (internally a holder is a special curve), so it could be that you first draw some lines, then the contents of  holder and then some lines again (example is the square root symbol). For the integral sign, first the integral sign is drawn, than the limits and finally the body. Again you can change this to you own liking in the font editor.

    Hope that clarifies how it is working.

    If you have some latex code, do send it, as I can use it to check the working of my import code. (email o.bergsma@gmail.com, the same email address as you find in the documents belonging to the equation editor)

    Otto

  • Hi Otto,


    Here is some LaTeX code from one of my Beamer presentations:


    \begin{align*}

    \uncover<1->{

    \angle BAG & = \tan^{-1} \left[\frac{2.50}{3.00}\right] \\

    & = 39.806\degree \\\\

    }

    \uncover<2->{

    \theta & = \tan^{-1} \left[\frac{1.500}{3.00}\right] \\

    & = 26.565\degree \\\\

    }

    \uncover<3->{

    \angle CEF & = \tan^{-1} \left[\frac{4.00}{3.00}\right] \\

    & = 53.130\degree

    }

    \end{align*}


    Good luck!


    Dave

  • Hi Otto,


    thanks a lot for writing this application. Sadly I can not do a lot with it at the moment since I am a Mac user...

    I am mostly writing this comment to make the developers of video scribe know that I am - as well - very interested in native support of LaTeX equations in the application.

    As soon as that happens, it will make VideoScribe a really amazing tool for me.

  • Any update on it.Are math characters available now as text
  • Hi Vaishnavi


    There are a number of maths symbol images in the VideoScribe image library, including plus, minus and square root. These can be found by entering 'math' as a search term when searching for images in VideoScribe.

  • Dear All,

    I just made a new topic "EquationSVGEditor", as I just finished version 2. (videoscribe topic equationSVGeditor)

    It has LaTeX support added (more programing than expected I must confess), and it seems to work reasonbly.

    You can find it at: EquationSVGEditor2.

    Let me know (prefably in the new topic, if this kind of software is sufficient, or that things need to be adapted.

    Otto

  • Thanks for all of your work on that, Otto!

  • Disclaimer: We like this software, and it has performed well during ordinary use, but we have not undertaken any in-depth testing and we have not checked it for the presence of malware or any potentially harmful behaviour, so you download and use it at your own risk and we do not accept any liability for any loss or damage it may cause.

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