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OpenOffice.org MathPosted by Andrew Poelstra on April 24, 2006.

A neat tool included with OpenOffice that few people know about is OO Math. This is a replacement for what I believe MS calls "Equation" in their suite. This program is not in your Applications menu, so there are two ways to get to it:

Open a terminal and type 'oomath'
Download my desktop shortcut[link dead] and rename it to something useful (the original name had spaces, so I had to change it for the web).

Once in, you'll find a really neat interface. You have your formula window, and below that your equation window. You'll also have a small pop-up menu with all the buttons you need. After a few minutes of playing with this, you'll get used to the language used, and be able to directly type your equations:

"s_3 = (a(1 - r^3)) over (1 - r)" is a simple example.

Really, the program needs no explaination beyond that, so I'll compile a list of gripes, and see if you can help me around some of these problems.

My font freedom is limited; I can't make individual parts of an equation bigger or smaller; when typing double summation, both sigmas are equal size beside each other.
The button interface is poorly organized. I can't find it now (not that I need it), but infinity was under miscellaneous, instead of in a "special number" tab with pi, i, e, and a variety of other constants.
The only decent way to export these is in PDF form, which is cumbersome and difficult to format decently.

Despite all this, I'm really happy with this tool, and it's a great addition to any hobby mathematician's desktop!