MathType and LibreOffice Math comparison

Question

In my office my team and I are going to type texts in the future which will include mathematical signs. Two programs are being proposed: LibreOffice Writer + Math or Microsoft Office + MathType.

I would like to advocate for the first solution, but I need to know what technical advantages and disadvantages each program has. Compatibility with Ubuntu is an evident and important characteristic for LibreOffice, but could you give some other aspects? As a side question, do you advice any other program, even if not WYSIWYG and thus not my preference in this case?

Solution 1

I am a scientist in computational fluid mechanics and I use both: MS Office with Microsoft Equation 3.0 at one of my computers at home, and Libre Office on Ubuntu at work, and at one of my home desktops. And I have never met any difficulties in creating and editing any (even quite complicated) equations. Additionally Ubuntu and Libre are free. But really I am very satisfied with both solutions.

Solution 2

Sorry for providing question instead answer and slightly hijacking, but why is choice limited to LibreOffice Writer?
There are just too many ways on Linux AFAIK to include math notation in a document.

One familiar and light option would be AbiWord, which accepts LaTeX notation and editing:

Other tool (abandoned unfortunately, which I compile from source) that offers LaTeX transcript in many formats through simple drag&drop functionality is ekee:

Hope this post is useful

Comments

[Admin]

For texts which include mathematic formulae LaTeX is an absolutely unrivaled solution. It does have some learning curve and it's not WYSIWYG (although LyX and other editors do combine WYSIWYG-capabilities with LaTeX syntax) - but it's much more efficient to typeset formulae in LaTeX than in MS Word or similar text processors.

[Admin]

To be fair, you can type TeX math with MathType in MS Word

[Agmenor]

Thank you. Is there a way for me to use MathType on Ubuntu?

[Paul Topping]

Sorry, no. Unfortunately that OS has never had that much success as a desktop OS so the market has been too small.

[meduz]

thanks for answering this question. I guess the community wants a solution for libreoffice not a story about advantages of mthtype over tex.