MathTools plug-in and Conditional Text

[maria_rowenas22710785]

I work at a publishing company. One of the challenges is having a student edition version with teacher answers. A solution we've been using is creating teacher answers on a separate layer. However, alignment issues and spacing issues always appear. In the past, I worked with another publishing company that used conditional text. It's cleaner and easier to use. However, when I attempted to use this approach, I noticed it does not work with the plug-in, MathTools. Any conditional text that has MathTools styles applied either crashed the program when turning on/off the condition or reverted back to (Unconditional). Is there any way MathTools can be utilized with the Conditional Text feature in InDesign? Help, please!

[Michael Bullo · Accepted solution]

I have no experience with MathTools so I'm just thinking laterally here. You'll often see people anchoring images to text and controlling the image anchor with conditional text. This is a sneaky way of applying conditional settings to a whole image frame. The same can be done with text frames. While this may complicate your design I'm wondering if putting everything that you need to apply MathTools formatting to in a separate frame which is in turn controlled by conditional text might side-step the problem.

[maria_rowenas22710785]

Thanks so much, Michael! You're awesome. I don't know why I didn't think of this. I used this solution before with another math plug-in. It works. I just needed someone like you to remind me about this work-around.

[Michael Bullo]

Hey that's great Maria. Happy it works.

[Peter Kahrel]

Maria -- Why not contact the MathTools developer? movemen - Contact

P.

[Schwörer, Ferdinand]

Thanks, Peter, for the heads-up!

[maria_rowenas22710785]

Hi Peter! Yes, I understand its best to go to the developer. Thanks for the contact info.

[Schwörer, Ferdinand]

Hello, Maria, this is Ferdinand from movemen.

Can you please share the version of MathTools and InDesign you are using?

You shouldn't see crashes with current versions of MathTools. If you do, I really like to reproduce and fix it.

Here's the intentionally brief story why MathTools currently won't support Conditional Text within MathZones (equations).

Conditional Text may produce unexpected (and sometimes even largely undetected) side-effects due to the way it works: 

Turning off a condition effectively cuts related text ranges out of the story.

For instance, applying a condition to a text range containing all but the last character of a Hyperlink will eliminate all but the last character from the Hyperlink source, after turning the condition off and back on. Use the Hyperlink panel to verify this: only the last character will be part of the Hyperlink.

MathTools MathZones would be affected in a very similar way:

MathTools represents MathZones as sequences of text characters. Those characters carry a payload which MathTools uses to protect the MathZone infrastructure as you modify the equation. You can type into the numerator of a fraction, for example, but you can't delete the characters representing the fraction bar. The same MathZone protection mechanism prevents you from applying a condition to parts of a MathZone to avoid corruption when turning off the condition.

Does that make sense?




Thanks,


Ferdinand

[Chad Chelius]

Now that's what I call service! Maria, you are now connected to Ferdinand who is a very talented developer and overall awesome guy! Share your info with him so he can address your problem. Cheers Ferdinand!

[Schwörer, Ferdinand]

Cheers, Chad!

[maria_rowenas22710785]

Thanks for your help, Chad.

[maria_rowenas22710785]

Hi Ferdinand! I truly appreciate the time you took to respond and explain the issue. It makes sense.

Michael, one of the responders to this forum, offered a workaround which works. Basically...building the Math in a separate text frame and treating it as an inline object within a text frame. It's a little more time consuming in the beginning. However, it saves time in the long run because you don't need to worry about reflowing the text on another layer when text is added/subtracted.

[Schwörer, Ferdinand]

Maria,

MathTools V2/V3 has a feature to wrap a MathZone into a inline frame that fits the MathZone.

You'll find it in the text context sub menu > Math. Or use QuickApply and type "Wrap MathZone".

This works on the selection context. Means you can select a paragraph, for example, and have any MathZone wrapped into a inline text frame. You may also reverse this operation using Unwrap MathZone...

[Gary23428111lpfc]

Hello Ferdinand,

I would like to ask about a renewed Mathtools license my company requested in October 2024. We have not been able to reach anyone through Movemen's contact listings. I am hoping you will see this request and follow up so that we can continue using Mathtools. My company is Graphic World, Inc (GW, Inc) and the IT director, Chris Arrow, reached out with a request and 350 dollar payment last October. We have been waiting since then for the renewed license. The payment was received by Movemen. I would appreciate any attention to this matter. Thanks.

Gary Clark

Project Manager

St. Louis, Missouri, USA

[MarceloMoreira]

Thanks to this post I´ve discover MathTools and I´m back here to alert about their infamous license system. After install the plugin if you need to move it to another machine (in case o upgrade, by example) it can only be done paying a 40 euro fee additional to the montly license you already pay. I´ve never heard about something like this and get me surprise (unfortunatelly after aquisition). This information is not clear on their site an it´s the reason a came here to make it clear to everyone who intent to purchanse it.