Reference

It is recommended to always use the iMath menus to create or modify iFormulas. Nevertheless, sometimes it will be necessary to fine-tune equations by editing them directly.

All iMath commands start with the string %%ii at the beginning of a line, which will be interpreted as a comment by Openoffice. When the document is recalculated, iMath parses the string and generates the formula that is displayed. The generated lines are marked by %%gg at the end of the line. Editing such a line makes no sense because it will be deleted at the next recalculation! Always modify the %%ii lines if you want to tweak an iFormula. Formulas may also have lines without either %%ii or %%gg, these will not be touched by iMath.

Elements

The following elements can be part of an iFormula definition string

• symbol

The name of a mathematical symbol or function, e.g. x or a_n

• expression

A mathematical expression in Openoffice math format

• list = { element; element; ... }

A list of other elements, enclosed in parentheses and separated by semicolons

Commands

After the initial %%ii, the following commands are possible:

• READFILE { "path/to/file" }

Open the given file and parse the iMath commands in this file. This command can be used to put common formulas in a file to re-use them. At the moment, the path is operation-system dependent, not a Openoffice URL!

• CLEAREQUATIONS

iMath stores all equations and functions that it encounters. If you want to make a fresh start in your document, use this command

• FUNCTION { hints, symbol, expression }

Declare a user-defined function. symbol is the name of the function. The expression declares the arguments of the function and can be either a single symbol or a list of symbols. The way that iMath treats this function can be influenced by function hints:

• • none: No function hints (must be used because iMath requires three arguments to the FUNCTION declaration
  • lib: A library function: It will not be affected by CLEAREQUATIONS
  • trig: For trigonometric functions. Tells iMath that this function will get special treatment when printing (e.g. <math>sin^2 x</math> instead of <math>(sin x)^2</math>)
  • expand: The function is to be expanded immediately. Useful for functions that are really abbreviations, e.g. square(x) will be expanded to <math>x^2</math>
  • nobracket: The function does not require brackets around the argument (e.g. sqrt(x) is printed as <math>root x</math>)
  • defdiff: Differentiate the definition of the function, not the function itself