Add Math Support/Abstract
Look at the source, the wiki destroyed the ascii-art formating!
Rationale
I often wanted to have a tool that allows complicated layouts but still is easy to use. This is exactly what scribus does. However for scientific papers it lacks one main capability: Formulas. So I want to add these as my summer of code project. Interest in this improvement is expressed by many people in the bugtracker [1][2], by debian users [3] and it's also in the projects roadmap [4].
Overview
The goal of this project is to add a easy to use math support to scribus. As the task of writing a complete math typesetter is too large for SOC a different approch is used. It is inspried by the Quark XPress(tm) plugin MATHSETTER [5]:
- Let the user enter LaTeX source either directly or more userfriendly via an graphical editor - Apply a LaTeX template on this so the user only has to type the formula and not a whole TeX document. - Run LaTeX on this source. - Display LaTeX's output in a frame while still keeping the (LaTeX-)forumla as a property so the whole things stays editable.
Use cases
o Scientific posters
It is very hard (if not even impossible) to create good-looking posters with LaTeX but it's easy to add formulas to LaTeX documents. On the other hand it's very easy to create good posters with scribus but a complicated process is necessary to add just a single formula. The ability to use LaTeX for typesetting the forumla and the post-processing it in scribus (easily possible, after all it's just a vector graphic from scribus' point of view) would greatly simplify this.
o Math/Physics teachers
At school I've seen a lot of teachers that created their tests with Microsoft Word and relying on its forumla editor or even on basic text formatting (sub-/superscript) and adding any "complicated" math symbols (vectors, integrals, etc.) by hand in the printout. Obviously the full power of latex is something they are unwilling to learn (and it is probably not required for them). So I belive they would be happy to have a WYSIWYG tool that supports embedded forumlas.
Deliverables
Math support, GUI editor, Python bindings