Is using a text editor a workflow for creating linear math for Word?

It is very easy to create linear expressions in a text editor. It currently seems that a screen reader user gets tripped up in the Microsoft Word math editor. If you make a mistake and backspace or if you add a space accidendetly, it becomes difficult to make changes.

Testing with Notepad, Notepad++, and VS Code, the three editors behaved the same.

Taking the expression, \sqrt ((4^3 +2)/2a) =7 and pasting it into the Word math editor, i.e., alt+= and then ctrl+v and then pressing enter produced the correct results. Moving back into the expression in Word and pressing ctrl+= built up the expression.

Then going from Word to the texteditors also worked identically. Copying the linear expression or the built-up expressionn to the clipboard and pasting it into the editors gave us:

√((4^3+2)/2a)=7

Notice that \sqrt was converted to the unicode character.

Now going back into Word and pasting the expression using √ instead of \sqrt yielded the same results. The only difference is that with \sqrt, you need to have a space character after the shortcut whereas with √, you should not put in a space.

It seems that students and professionals could benefit from using this workflow to create documents with math. If a textbook in HTML or EPUB with MathML were provided to the students, the mathML can be copied into the Word document and converted to the Office Math from Word.

The math that originated as MathML can then be copied and pasted as text and then edited and pasted back into Word.

If we think this is a good option, we should create documentation describing the workflow.

daisy / math-a11y

Is using a text editor a workflow for creating linear math for Word? #19