Open Error Search Dialog in WinEdt

(Oct 27, 2008)

I closed WinEdt's error dialog at one time and could not find a way to open it again. After spending quite some times, I finally found the way. In WinEdt 5.5, go to Options->Settings. Then, we will see the 'Errors' tab. There are three things we need to check

1. C++ style errors
2. Extended TeX Messages
3. TeX Source Tracking.

Finally, there is another option we have to UNcheck, 'Quick Mode'. When the 'Quick Mode' option is unchecked, error search dialog will work normally.

Tex2Im Tool

(Feb 4, 2008)

Today, Roger's Online Equation (http://rogercortesi.com/eqn/) almost put me in trouble when my friend used it and could not make it work on his equation with norm:

d_{S} = 2d_{D} + \left|\left|\left[\Delta x,\Delta y,\Delta z\right]^{T}\right|\right|

I don't know why it did not work in Roger's Online Equation Server. Perhaps, it does not have some important packages. Thus, I tried using tex2im locally.

I downloaded it from http://www.nought.de/tex2im.html

Since I already had LaTex tool on my Cygwin already, I could just copy tex2im directly to Cygwin's bin directory. Next, create a test.tex file with the equation above. Then, generate the output file with resolution 600 x 600, white text, black background, with transparency, without antialias. The above task can be done with the following command:

tex2im -r "600x600" -t "white" -b "black" -z test.tex

Note if we use the -z option, the anti-alias option will be disabled by default, but if we don't use the -z option, the anti-alias option will be enabled by default.

LaTex Equation Editor on the web

Sep 15, 2007

There is an interesting work on the web, and it's free. It is LaTex Equation Editor, http://test.izyba.com/equationeditor/equationeditor.php. This tool creates an image with transparent background, making it easy to embed in other software such as MS PowerPoint.

The drawbacks are:
1. Text in the equation cannot be changed. If we need white text, we will find ourselves in trouble.
2. Text size is a bit too small. I like it bigger in many situations.

Note: if you know a way to handle these problems, please leave a comment in this blog.
Many thanks

Update (Oct 28, 2007): I found a better one. It is Roger's Online Equation Editor at http://rogercortesi.com/eqn/index.php#note. It can generate transparent background. Plus, we can increase resolution of an output to suit our work.

Texmaker: Free cross-platform LaTeX editor

Sep 15, 2007

Texmaker (http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/) seems to be a very good LaTex editor tool. I used it once a long time ago. It's pretty impressive, and I think it is better than TeXnicCenter (http://www.texniccenter.org/). The tool has no more update for more than a year). However, Texmaker does not have some cool features in WinEdt such as DVI search.

FYI: DVI search is a feature in WinEdt helping a user to find a portion in DVI document corresponding to a target text in the editor. You can try it by ctrl-shift-s in a WinEdt editor. If your DVI file is open, it will jump to the corresponding text.

FYI: there is a forum about LaTex and its editors at forum http://latex-community.org/. This forum has dedicated sections for TeXnicCenter, Texmaker, and WinEdt. Sounds interesting.

Aurora: Embedding LaTex Math into MS Office

Sep 15, 2007

A few days ago, I found an interesting (but not free) tool for embedding LaTex Math into MS PowerPoint. Its name is Aurora, http://elevatorlady.ca/. Interestingly, this tool works in other MS Office tools, including Word, Excel, and Visio.

I have not tried it yet, but I will surely take a look at it when I have more time.