Style Editor: customizing the Editor

The Editor toolbar can be customized. The MathFlow Editor comes with a standard toolbar as well as other predefined toolbars. You can also define your own custom toolbar configurations. In fact, the default toolbar is a customized one, containing most of the symbols from the pre-defined palettes and most templates.

To use an alternative toolbar, you must first have defined a Config file for the custom toolbar (see documentation on the Toolbar definition language). If you've done that, select Custom from the Toolbar section of the General Editing Preferences dialog, and browse to its Config file:

To change from one custom toolbar to another, switch to a standard toolbar and switch back to custom, choosing the new config file. Alternatively, choose the new config file, then close and reopen the MathFlow Editor.

To update a custom toolbar, you'll need to manually edit its toolbar configuration file (config file) first. Then either switch to a standard toolbar and switch back to custom, or close and reopen the MathFlow Editor.

You can choose what gets inserted when pressing the spacebar, modifying the default behavior. Your choices are to insert

The most convenient spacebar behavior depends on whether accurately encoding the underlying mathematical meaning of an expression is important in a particular context.

In many situations, the underlying mathematical meaning is not as important as the visual appearance of an expression. In these contexts, most users prefer the spacebar simply insert space characters, as on a typewriter. However, MathML rendering engines employ standard mathematical typesetting rules to automatically add space around operators and other constructs. Inserting additional space characters in markup generally produces worse-looking results unless there is a specific reason. Regardless, touch-typists often find themselves hitting the spacebar out of habit. As a result, users may want to turn the spacebar off entirely.

In contexts, the mathematical meaning of an expression is important, such as material intended for symbolic computation, automatic answer checking, etc. In these situations, extraneous space characters may cause trouble. Moreover, in these contexts, adding invisible "hint characters" to resolve ambiguous situations is important. The most common situation where ambiguity arises is determining whether adjacent constructs should be multiplied or whether they represent a function application (e.g., does m(x + y) mean "m times x plus y" or "m of x plus y"?). The convention in MathML is to resolve the ambiguity by marking the multiplications with an Invisible Times character. Thus, users creating semantically meaningful MathML generally prefer to have the space bar insert the Invisible Times character. The option to have the spacebar insert an Invisible Times character only after an operand is a convenient compromise allowing one to space normally within text tokens without modifying the overall editing behavior.

Check this box to make inserted parentheses and other "fence" characters not stretch by default. In MathML, fence characters marked as non-stretchy will remain their default size (i.e., not growing automatically to cover the height of other content within the same parent element). In order for fences to grow to the expected height in many contexts, the conscious insertion of additional expression groups to collect fences and surrounding content is required. While this is good practice and results in semantically meaningful markup, many users prefer to instead turn off automatic stretching for fences.

Single characters will be inserted in italic if this box is checked, and as upright text if not. Since single character identifiers are traditionally typeset in italics in mathematics, this option is primarily useful when entering chemical equations where single character identifiers are traditionally typeset in an upright style.

Uppercase Greek letters will be inserted as normal if checked (i.e., upright, not italicized) or italic if not checked.

Check this box to turn on automatic recognition of functions. When this option is not selected, you must manually control how characters are wrapped in MathML token elements. For more detail, see Recognize common functions in the next section.

Differential ⅆ will appear as a double struck character to differentiate it from a regular character d. This also affects the exponential ⅇ, imaginary ⅈ, and imaginary ⅉ.