Chugging Along

The summer classes ended last May 21. I distributed the course cards on that day and accompanied my daughter Eveth as she finished her other enrollment-related activities (going to the clinic, activating her CSB Infonet account, having her ID picture taken). After that, we returned to EGI and picked up her two sisters and we all went to MOA. We watched Shrek 3 and ate lunch at Jollibee. We went home after dropping by PowerBooks.

I stayed at home on May 22 and was with Eveth again at CSB on May 23 for her frosh orientation. I foresee having to do this "managing" for a couple of weeks :-)

In the meantime, I continue to hammer at my course materials preparation activities. Since I am doing most of the work using OpenOffice.org, I am listing here some related notes:

1. I can now type the "math code" directly on the page, highlight it with the mouse and, with a click of the Formula button, automagically transform the highlighted text to the desired format.
• To place the Formula button in the, for example, Standard Toolbar,
1. Go to View > Toolbars > Customize...
2. Choose the Toolbars tab.
3. Choose Standard in the Toolbars dropdown list.
4. Click the Add... button.
5. Select Insert in Category and Formula (the one with square root of a as icon) in Commands.
6. Click Add and then Close.
7. You can click on the Up or Down arrows to place the icon in your desired position in the toolbar.
8. Click OK.
• To invoke the Formula command via a shortcut key, say CTRL+M,
1. Go to View > Toolbars > Customize...
2. Select the Keyboard tab.
3. In the Shortcut Keys box, scroll down until you see "Ctrl+M" and click on it once to highlight it.
4. In the Category box, select "Insert".
5. In the Function box, select the second "Formula" listing.
6. Now click on the button up in the right that says Modify, then click on OK.
   
2. I can use the Color command to change the color of my formula. Here is a sample code: color red {x^2 + 2 x - 1 = 0}. The available colors are white, black, cyan, magenta, red, blue, green and yellow.
   
3. The secant and cosecant functions are typeset in italics. To make them appear similar to the other trigonometric functions, I can type either "func sec" or "nitalic csc".
4. I wanted to find out how to align multiple equations by aligning on the equal signs. Stacks and matrices are possible solutions. But matrices are better.
   
5. I came across OOoLaTeX, which allows integration of TeX and OpenOffice.org. I tried the Cygwin on Windows XP setup but can't seem to get it going. I have written to the author of the macro author but have not received a reply yet.