White Spaces around Equations

[sureshkumarc20579032]

Hi,

We are type setting in Adobe InDesign 2021, using MathType 7.4 application for equations.

When importing MathType EPS into InDesign, we are getting white spaces within equation frames in all sides. So this white spaces and word spaces in left & right, makes more spaces when comparing with other text. We are manually cropping the frames on both left and right side of the frame.

Could you please suggest how to import the equations without white spaces. So that we can avoid manual work during pagination process.

Thanks,

Sureshkumar,

InDesign Template Developer,

Integra Software Services.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Exporting to EPS is an obsolete approach. Do you have the ability to export to any other format that ID will import?

And perhaps this is just a very simple example, but I can't see the need to use an equation plugin for that equation... it would typeset better in inline characters.

Otherwise, I think all the issues would lie with what MathML is exporting, not what or how InDesign is importing it. If the tool does not allow elimination of 'framing' spaces, you could eliminate the typeset spaces before and after the equation and get equivalent spacing. Or manually shrink the image frame to eliminate the side spacing, which would likely be tedious and fussy to do.

Again, perhaps you're showing a very simple example and need much more complex equation formatting, but my impression is that MathML is not bringing anything to this project except unneeded complexity.

[davecourtemanche]

It could also be the settings on your import. Is it set to media (Mathtype may have padding around the equation) or to crop to image. Check the Show Import Options box when importing the equation and review the settings.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"Exporting to EPS is an obsolete approach"

True, but unfortunately, EPS is the only available export format besides WMF, which is worse, and will do the same.

In any case, @sureshkumarc20579032 , the extra space you are seeing is MathType's fault. I just downloaded and installed a demo version of MathType so I could see what's happening and my suspicion is correct: When exporting to EPS, MT is creating a very generous bounding box around the objects and this is considered as part of the graphic. Since InDesign can only place objects according to their bounding box, this is the best you're going to get. There appears to be no way around this as there are no options in MathType to change how it exports a bounding box.

[Joel Cherney]

That mirrors my own findings, Brad. 

If I were in your shoes, Sureshkumar, I would try something else. I know that MathType will export formats besides EPS and WMF, both of which I will happily agree are poor choices for a print workflow. However, I note that MathType will export both LaTaX and MathML, and so I wonder if you couldn't process that output with something (anything!) that would give you some other kind of placeable file. E.g., you could export LaTeX from MathType and use pandoc to convert your LaTeX to PDF via pdflatex. I don't know which conversion path would be best for you, but the one you're currently using is, as Brad describes, causing your issue, so playing around with other methods to see if you can cook up a workflow that doesn't cause this issue makes a lot of sense. 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

@Joel Cherney : All I saw in the version I downloaded now were these options for Export: EPS with TIFF preview; EPS with WMF preview; EPS with No preview; WMF, and GIF (bitmap, of course). 

Attached is sample file placed at 100%. As you can see, the dimensions of the placed object are exactly the same as the bounding box defined in the MathType EPS. As I said, there's nothing InDesign (or any program) can do differently here.

btw: WMF also exported with the same large bounding box with the extra space.

 

Of bigger concern to me is that the EPS exports DO NOT include the fonts, so WILL be substituted when opened on another user's system if the exact ones aren't available, especially so on a Mac to distasterous results particularly with the Symbol font as the font encoding is completey different. This is why the divide symbol changed to a check mark in this screen grab.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

That makes sense (of a sort) in that equations are usually placed in blocks by themselves, not closely run inline. Most uses of imported equations I can think of would never notice the image border space.

[Scott Falkner]

Try converting the EPS files to native Ilustrator files (with PDF cpompatibility turned on) in Illustrator. You might need to delete some unfilled and unstroked paths that MathType creates to form the bounding box of the graphic. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Again, unless you have equations that are beyond InDesign's formatting capabilities, I'd ditch MathML and use inline text for examples such as you show, and a little bit of multiline formatting with styles in text frames for moderately complex equations. This will bypass all of the problems and issues raised in this thread.

Sometimes a "helper" utility just isn't all that much help.

[Joel Cherney]

Well, I do have to say that this particular equation doesn't seem to need MathType to display correctly. MathType is an app for laying out equations; this is very different from MathML, which is a markup language and a W3C spec for describing equations. So James, if you're saying to Sureshkumar that MathType isn't really needed here, I'd have to agree. It'd be faster to just set that equation in InDesign, by a wide margin.

But Sureshkumar, are there maybe other cases in your templates where you really do need MathType to lay out complex equations? If so, there are a few suggestions already made here that might work for you.

1) Dave Courtemanche suggests checking the Import Options; sadly, the EPS import options don't have the same crop settings as the PDF import settings. But converting your EPS to PDF before placing might give you some flexibility there, so you could crop to art and get rid of the unnecessary space in that way.

2) Scott Faulkner's suggestion to preprocess in Illustrator might work as well; it wouldn't be too hard to set up an Action in Illustrator that would be able to batch process your MathType EPS files successfully.

3) And yes, I think that James is correct if the equation that you gave us in your sample is the kind of equation you need to handle, you don't need MathType to lay it out. 

4) But if you have a sufficient number of equations of sufficient complexity to merit using MathType, then I personally would try to get away from the EPS output from MathType. To answer your unasked question, Brad, you don't actually "Save As" MathML, you just copy the equation in the MathType equation editor and paste it into your text editor of choice. There's a preference in MathType that controls whether you get MathML or TeX when you copy & paste equations in this way. 

If you've never done a lot of math typesetting, then this last kind of workflow sounds silly. But getting good layout of complicated equations is astoundingly difficult, and it's why so many people involved in academic mathematics rely on LaTeX or other similar tools when they need to publish their work.  Typically they do not use InDesign for this task at all. The strategy of laying out equations by hand in inline text frames would work for a botiuqe kind of operation, but it's clear that the OP here is working on designing templates that have to be used by other operators. Asking those operators to lay out complex equations by hand is not going to reduce the total formatting workload, which is what the OP is asking for, in this case.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

@Joel Cherney Understood. In fact, you can even copy and paste into InDesign directly, but whether you paste into Word or ID, that method also includes the extra white space around.

e.g.

The Illustrator route is what I would do as well, as resaving from Illustrator will save a better-fitting bounding box, however it again is incumbent on having the same encoded fonts available on whichever system one is working on, otherwise characters will possibly change glyphs, which happens to me if I open the same graphic above in Illustrator (whether it be saved as EPS or WMF):

 FYI, direct PDF export is not available in the Windows version of MathType, that was only available in the Mac version which no longer is supported past Mojave.

You can however print them to PDF, but that includes the full page size dimension, so would not be good for placing into anything.

 

[Laubender]

Hi tohgether,

has someone a MathType EPS sample file that can be shared with us?

I'd like to see in the PostScript code.

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[Uniqued]

Hi everyone;
I think this problem was solved before thanks to @MrMathType.

You didn't say how you're getting the equations into InDesign, nor even that they're EPSs. If they're from a Word document, and if you're getting them into InDesign for Windows by placing the entire Word document into InDesign, then Loic.Aigon is mostly correct. The equations are converted on the fly to EPS, but it's InDesign that does it, not MathType.

Whether they come from Word or not, MathType by default adds 2 pixels of padding to all sides of an equation. You can change this value (make sure to exit MathType first -- including the MathType Server in the SYSTRAY/Notification Area if you're on Windows):

• Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Design Science\DSMT6\Windows (change PicturePadding)
• Mac: ~/Library/Preferences/com.DesignScience.DSMT6.plist (change <key>Windows/PicturePadding</key>)
  
  https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/trimming-mathtype-equation-boundary-spacing/m-p/...

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Two pixels should be negligible when the equation is of any particular complexity; you usually want such text inserts to be spaced off at least a bit.

In cases like the OP, though, where the "equations" are just a few numbers, it seems like the simpler approach would be to, well, just use numbers. 🙂