Scientific writings

The apparent void in computers of an aid in scientific writing (formulas, et cetera) really perplexes me. I have never used my iBook or any computer for taking notes in class, but I pondered it yesterday. Because my classes deal primarily with equations (differential equations and advanced physical chemistry), though, I forewent such a possibility: I have no easier method to jot down wavefunctions and operators than my own handwriting. Of course, there exist solutions that create wonderful looking output, but these each have their own caveats with use.

The first that I know of is Microsoft Word’s Equation Editor. This little gem is quite useful for inserting equations into Word documents and contains most (but not all) of the necessary symbols to complete the equations I run into most often. It’s output is clean, but not easily amenable to use in other types of documents. In addition, this application reeks of its classic Mac OS underpinnings, and does not support multiple-line output in a single equation, requiring that the user instantiate multiple equations to get the job done. Finally, the typeface is limited to a single, unknown font that I have yet to identify (partially due to the majority of italics). There must be more than one typeface that contains these characters (Unicode). I am a font freak and it really annoys me when I am locked into some default font that I do not enjoy. (Anal, maybe, but we all have our pet peeves. Fonts are one of mine.)

Then there is the geek’s love obsession, TeX which is most commonly found in the LaTeX package and other derivatives. Although this can produce some exquisite formulae, it requires knowledge of an (in my opinion, arcane) syntax to represent structure and symbols. This syntax is not forgiving, either—even the smallest of errors will result in no output, the interpreter spewing nothing but senseless errors. This abstracted method of writing equations is not for the quick note taking I would need. Being open source, there are many different incarnations of this typesetting tool, allowing for a sundry of output formats (PDF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, etc).

Alas, I do not foresee any easy fix to this given the limitations of how people input and interact with data on a computer. The complexity of equations just does not fit into the simple left-to-right writing system computers expect. I wish some great Mac OS X developer would tackle this issue.

[update] For those who are not up to speed with their quantum mechanics. I was attempting to show the normalization of the 3-D particle in a box. I squared the normalization constants for the x, y, and z parts, but forgot to square the rest of the wavefunction. I have to thank my physical chemistry professor, Dr. Sean Casey, for pointing out that seemingly small but grossly incorrect mistake. (Shame on me for not seeing it.) Again, the need to spend so much time just to input the right equation is only further emphasized here–I am so used to writing this sort of equation down on paper but putting it into the computer takes far longer given its complexity.

[update #2] Ugh, I forgot the dτ in my corrected version rendering it once again incorrect for another reason. My physical chemistry professors can sleep well tonight.