EQ Editor 2.0 is now live!
Version 2.0 includes a number of important and requested upgrades including multiple equation lines, import and export of equation data, zoom and improved cropping, printing, export of data in PDF or HTML formats, and more! Version 2.0 requires iOS 5.0 which is a free download. Also be aware that there are most likely going to be bugs with a patch that has this many changes, so feel free to contact me if there is anything unusual happening. I’ve already found a couple myself, though they are more on the level of annoying than painful.
In any case, here are some screenshots for you to look at. And remember, your feedback is always welcome:
eqeditor 
Hi, I just bought your app, and although it seems promising, I found the interface very painful to use. Any way you can make it have a keyboard style more like the regular iOS keyboard (changing like the one in Numbers)?
Also, I couldn’t find an option to use accents or “prime”‘s or “asterisks” in equations… (Imagine my luck, these were on the first equation I wanted to use! heheh).
Anyway, hope you can improve on this app, ’cause we really need some good and powerful equation editors for the iPad!
Thank you for your purchase and I’m sorry the interface was giving you some problems. As far as the primes go, if you are using the ipad only version, you should be able to reach them easily by pressing and holding the “comma” on the number pad for 0.5 secs and then releasing. A popover will display and it should have all of the primes plus a number of other punctuation elements. The asterisk symbol should also be reachable by making a popover display from the times. If you’re using the lite version, it is something that needs more polish, but there are a number of limitations due to making it usable on the iphone as well.
I am looking into adding support for the standard keyboard (it’s one of the handful of things on the table) but I haven’t had time for development work for several weeks. I would have done it sooner, but when I was testing it, it seemed to work rather well for me as most of the commonly used functions are all available on popovers in the top half of the interface and the larger rows of keys at the bottom were only used for less common options. However, what makes sense to me may not work well for everyone.
Hi, I’m using EQ Editor 2.0 for the iPad.
Why am I getting ⅀ instead of ∑ for the summation operator, and
why am I getting ∐ instead of ∏ for the product operator?
~ Reo
The normal sum and product are grouped with the first set of large ops, i.e. the integrals, square roots etc. Are you saying that you’re clicking on the normal ones in the table view and you are getting those two to display instead?
That seems like a weird problem and my first suggestion would be to restart your iPad and if it still persists to maybe reinstall the app. I haven’t run across it when testing on the version I have so please let me know if it still persists after reinstall.
I have rebooted my iPad and reinstalled EQ Editor, to no avail. For the record, I am running iOS 5.0.1.
The “normal” operators in the table view do not display properly. I would send you a screenshot but I am not able to paste it here. This is awkward!
Any more suggestions?
~ Reo 🐬
I am sending you an email instead to see if you can send me that screenshot. Let me know if you get it or not.
I do a lot of linear algebra, so adding support for linear algebra (matrices, operators, etc.) would be welcome.
Everyone has his wish list. That’s mine. 🙂
Alot of people are wanting matrices for sure. I will be working on it, but I’m currently working on a new project ATM so it may not be for several weeks or more.
Dropbox integration and ability to copy equations to the clipboard are badly needed. The current need for iTunes is a major limitation.
I agree about the need to have a better system in place as far as file export goes. However, you can copy both the images and the MathML to the clipboard. The former is by clicking the camera in “view” mode and the later by clicking the “copy” button in edit mode.
In any case, thanks for the feedback!
Three frustrating things in your latest version that can be easily fixed to make this app work great:
1. The lower crop guide does not work – in Portrait Mode, you can at least see it, in Landscape Mode, it is off the screen and there is no way to scroll the window down to it. I find that the app does not work well in Landscape Mode – perhaps making both the input window (with all the keyboards and arrows, etc.) and the Equation result window scrollable would help.
2. I rally need to be able to copy the equation without any background – currently, when you copy or save to clipboard you get an annoying white background and no way to remove it in Keynote or Pages. If you could please make the editor work in layers with a transparent background, many shouts of joy will come your way.
3. iPad and iPhone/iPod users expect to be able to point and tap an insertion point on the their work in progress. While the arrows are sort of useful, being able to tap on the equation itself to make insertion/edit point would save much aggravation. It is the iOS way and the app should behave following the iOS standards.
Hello and thank you for your feedback.
1) I haven’t seen any complaints with the crop guides actually not being drawn before (they are in the middle of each side of the guide on my iPad). Are you using it on iPad or the lite version with iPhone or some other screen output? I have noticed that the squares are not always responsive. This is usually because the system thinks you are in the middle of one kind of gesture and it won’t accept the drag gesture until you stop and allow it to reset some internal counter. I can try and make the graphic for the guides larger although I have made the hit box much bigger than the graphical part.
The equation result window and the edit window are both draggable. The equation window only allows dragging when your equation size gets larger (like when you’re zooming in), but the edit window should scroll up and down with a flick. Is it not doing so?
2) I have transparent backgrounds on the list, and they were the default in earlier versions. However, I made it draw a white background instead because having a transparent background made the equation very difficult to select and work with in Pages (at least) and probably other apps. I will try and add transparencies as an option in a future patch, but not the next one as it has already been submitted.
3) I agree that it would be useful to click and point, however it is much more complicated to program as there is no way to use the built in system features. I would need to program code to do hit testing on where the user tapped and then do a fair amount of work to turn that into a unique location in the DOM tree. So I’m not sure if I’ll ever have it do full clicking, but I should be able to have it click to change between equations at some point.
In any case, it will probably be awhile before I get another patch out (other than the 2.1 patch that I submitted) as I’ve got to finish the new app I’m working on, but thank you for your feedback and let me know if you have any more suggestions or any issues with the program.
I have the reader edition, but I’d like test if the full version works like I want.
Can I have an tryal version?
My questions is:
-Work with greek numbers
-If I could copy and paste in Pages program
Hello. I’m glad you liked EQ reader. From what I understand, the only way I can give out trial versions is if I set you up with a development key. This is a kind of annoying procedure that I’d rather not do, but I can answer as many questions about it as you like. If you did go ahead and purchase a copy and were unsatisfied, I believe Apple would let you have a refund for iTunes store credit.
As far as what it does, yes it will let you work with greek letters and numbers and many other kinds of mathematical symbols. It will let you paste an image of the math you’ve created into Pages or (in the next version) save the resulting image into your photo album. You can also export it as MathML, HTML, PNG, or a PDF file and save them to your computer or email them to someone (though that last feature won’t be out for maybe a week or so).
The difference between EQ Editor Lite and Pro is basically that EQ Editor pro has a better input area as it can use some of the iPad only stuff and it has many more symbols than EQ Editor Lite, but EQ Editor Lite can be ran on an iPhone or an iPad. They both support all of the greek symbols and a large number of math symbols, but pro has some of the more specialized ones.
Can EQ Editor be used to input equations in “quickoffice pro hd” and “smartoffice 2” ? Or it supports only pages app, on ipad4? Pls reply.
EQ Editor isn’t dependent on any of those apps. It lets you create equations and then convert them to an image that you can copy to the clipboard or save to your album. You can also use it to save the image as a PNG or a PDF or export it to MathML and it will sync those files with Dropbox or you can email them or save them to a computer using iTunes.
Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks for your reply. I found out that EQ editor is not supported in smartoffice 2 app. Only those word processors that allow images to be pasted in the document edit window, will support EQ editor.
I am using the latest version of iOS on ipad 4. I see that the cursor movement in EQ editor window is very slow. Am I supposed to change any settings etc?
My second question is: I am unable to adjust the size of the window where the equations are displayed due to which I am not able to see all the keys used for selecting symbols to be input.
Pls help me.
Thanks
Not sure if this answers your first question, but to save an image to the album you need to:
1) if you are in edit mode, exit edit mode by tapping the gray margin.
2) arrange the equation view the way you want it to look including scrolling, adjusting the size by zooming, etc.
3) press the camera button on the toolbar. This will convert the equation to an image and take you to a different screen where you can crop the image if you like.
4) in the top toolbar of the crop image screen there is a button that will let you save it to the album.
To answer the button question, the entire button view is a scroll view. To get to the buttons at the bottom of the view, drag your finger up or down in an empty part of the view and it will scroll up and down.
There shouldn’t be any performance issues with your set up. Is there a large delay between when you tap the cursor button and when the cursor moves or is the issue that it only moves a character at a time?
If the former, you can try leaving edit mode in order to save your equation and then forcing the app to quit by pressing down the power button until the shutdown screen appears and then holding the home button until the app quits. Restarting your iPad also works.
If the latter, remember that the screen is tappable and it is probably faster to tap the screen where you want the cursor to go and then use the cursor buttons when you need a more exact cursor movement.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for your reply !!
” the former, you can try leaving edit mode in order to save your equation and then forcing the app to quit by pressing down the power button until the shutdown screen appears and then holding the home button until the app quits. Restarting your iPad also works.”
I tried the above method. Quitting the app and again opening it helped to some extent. The problem is – there is a small delay between the tapping and movement of the cursor. Only sometimes the delay becomes a bit too much – even 2 seconds !! Not only that, even after tapping at a position, i can’t see the cursor there, but when i type something, character appears at that place. But in this way, without seeing the cursor at a place, i do not have control & certainty that i have got my cursor where i want it to be. Typing math question papers this way is a slow process for me 😦
The response to delete key is also a bit too much sometimes.
What do i do?
I am only guessing at this point, but is this happening when there are only a screens worth of equations or do you have dozens of equations on the page? Unfortunately, the draw code keeps a buffer of all the equations on the page, even if they are off the screen, so when you do an update to something on a later page, it may be drawing all of those off screen ones as well. The new draw code won’t have this problem, but it isn’t out yet.
You might try saving your work as an XML file by leaving edit mode and then pressing the Disk button on the toolbar. Then give the file a name and save it. The bookmark button has a similar way of saving it too. Then go back into edit mode and hit the clear button. Your new equations shouldn’t have any performance issues and you should maybe try breaking up the number of equations you give it at a time if this fixes it.
If this is not a fix, then there may be something else causing the delay. I would try completely deleting the app and downloading it again. If it is still slowing down after doing that, let me know and I can contact you by email to try and work it out and make a patch with a fix.
The cursor delay is happening with just one equation !!! And I know there is no problem with touch sensitivity as my ipad 4 is brand new and the touch is excellent in every app!!
The method suggested by your good self of saving in XML format etc will be too time consuming for me as I type a lot.
As of now, I can type expressions and insert them for each question as it comes. There is also the problem of arranging the image in a line. I mean, the words and image do not seem to fit n a single line, I.e. the image seems to be out of place however I try to fit it in – this does not happen all the time but sometimes when the expression is long enough etc.
Anyways, will keep you posted of any other difficulties so that you can work on your app 🙂
Regards
Giridhar
Thanks for letting me know about all of this. I am sure it’s not because of the hardware. There is just some sort of difference between how the iPad 4 works and the earlier models that is causing a delay in how my software does its equation rendering. My guess is it has something to do with the Retina display though there could be other culprits.
I am working on a new patch that uses a completely different method of drawing that should be much less problematic. I should also have an iPad and computer setup that can test this better.
I would like to email you my document which is a math question paper. Because the formatting problems that have emerged while pasting an equation from the EQ editor are really painful. But at the same time, I seem to hav become quite fast in working with the editor. How do I email you my page document ?