Looking for text/equation searchable word processor

[philrock]

I'm writing a paper on complex calculations of gear teeth. It is currently 39 pages long and will be about 60 pages long when finished. It has many Greek symbols and will have about 100 equations and a 75-line table when finished. About a dozen drawings will be included as .jpg pictures. So far I’ve been working in MS Word, which works, but is very slow going. A very important part of the job is checking that the math, text, tables, equations and pictures are correct and consistent with each other. This proves to be extremely difficult in MS Word - especially searching equations, which you can only search one at a time. It would be very helpful to have the ability to search the entire document, including equations, for text and symbols, all at the same time. I checked MathType and it does not have this capability.

If you know of a word processor that has the search capability I need, I would very much like to know about it.

Phil Rockwell

 

[SkipVought]

Phil,
I notice that you're registered as Mechanical @Eng-Tips.

You might also post there in one of the forums in

https://www.eng-tips.com/threadcategory.cfm?lev2=22,

the Engineering Computer Programs forum list. See what other engineer might recommend

Skip,
[sub]
Just traded in my OLD subtlety...
for a NUance![/sub]
"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" A. Einstein

You Matter...
unless you multiply yourself by the speed of light squared, then...
You Energy!

 

[SkipVought]

Phil,

What version of Word?

"Equation Editor (Microsoft Equation 3.0) was included in earlier versions of Word, but was removed from all versions in the January 2018 Public Update (PU) and replaced with a new equation editor."



Skip,
[sub]
Just traded in my OLD subtlety...
for a NUance![/sub]
"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" A. Einstein

You Matter...
unless you multiply yourself by the speed of light squared, then...
You Energy!

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

General Geek

 

[Andrzejek]

From his post, it looks like Phil doesn't have a problem creating the equations.
He wants to know how to search them.

---- Andy

"Hmm...they have the internet on computers now"--Homer Simpson

 

[mintjulep]

You might look into Quarto

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3671668/how-to-create-word-docs-from-r-or-python-with-quarto.html

and sympy

https://www.sympy.org/en/index.html

together in a Jupyter notebook.

But I think it would be clunky.

 

[macropod]

It's not at all clear to me how any comparison could be done except visually, which means going through them one-by-one. Your best option would seem to be to use a split window so you can compare, say, a math object in one window with whatever references it in the second window.

That said, it would be a simple matter to write a macro that goes through all the equations and, for example, exports them to a separate document for comparison purposes. Something similar could be done for pictures, tables, etc. It would be a chore, though, to get all of these outputs in the correct order in a single file and that still wouldn't address how the various items are dealt with in the corresponding text.

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

 

[philrock]

Guys,

Thanks very much for your replies. Paul, it had occurred to me that what you said should be possible. After gathering search results into a text file, maybe you could load them into a spreadsheet for sorting and comparison. However, the Word VBA work required is a bit above my head.

Phil Rockwell

 

[macropod]

After gathering search results into a text file, maybe you could load them into a spreadsheet for sorting and comparison

I would recommend against that approach, since exporting content to a text file would be liable to both delete unsupported characters and whatever formatting you have. If you need the content in Excel, you would do better to export it directly to an Excel workbook. You could, of course, simply copy the whole of the document content and paste it into Excel, then delete whatever you don't want to compare.

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

 

[philrock]

Paul,

Thanks for your post. I guess I should say that I'm working in MS Word 2010, in .docx format, using equation editor 3.0.

I could not see a way to export the document from Word into an Excel file.

I opened the document in Word and copied the whole document to the clipboard, then pasted it into Excel. The equations came through as images, so were not searchable.

Can you give me any tips on how to pursue your latest ideas?

 

[mintjulep]

Word equations are OMaths objects.

OMaths objects are accessible by VBA. However the online documentation is somewhat cursory.

The documentation gives an example of how to create an equation with VBA, but nothing for examining or manipulating them after they exist.

My brief efforts didn't produce anything helpful.

 

[macropod]

Given the inherent difficulties in exporting Word math objects to other apps, I'd suggest doing the lot in Word. If needed, you can use a second document with a table into which you can copy/paste content from your primary document and use that much as you might use Excel.

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]