Download link for XYStudio EasyCapture:http://www.xydownload.com/easycapture/
The challenge was getting the Microsoft Equation 3.0 in Microsoft Word (1997-2003 .doc) files into HTML (Dreamweaver). In the Mac Platform, there is a right-click, save as image option. However, in the PC World, there wasn’t such an option available. After talking to a few instructional designers, it seemed that most people were using screen captures as part of their workflow.
In the mac side, it’s built in. You can press command (apple) + shift + 4 and then select the region you want to save as a PNG file. command + shift + 3 does a full screen capture. There is also an application called “Grab” that comes installed on most Macs.
On the PC side, there’s no built in screen capture tools. It was difficult to find a suitable application, because there are so many different applications built for PC’s dating back to the late 90’s and early 2000’s. After a brief search, I settled on XYSoft’s EasyCapture for a short list of reasons: 1) free, 2) flexibility on file types, 3) updated somewhat recently (2007).
The next challenge: consistency. In order to get all the equations looking consistent across a course, curriculum, and even World Campus as a whole, we had to take sizes into account. For our purposes, making sure that 150% zoom was chosen in the Word Document was enough to assure consistency. Will this differ if the resolution is different? It shouldn’t, but I need to do further testing.
It’s also important to note that screen capture software will capture exactly what you see on the screen, so we need to make sure that the mouse is out of the way, that we select a region of the screen that does not contain other irrelevant content, and that Microsoft’s grammar/spelling squiggly lines are not visible.
Microsoft Equation (defaults) sizes:
Full: 12pt
Subscript/Superscript: 7pt
Sub-Subscript/Superscript: 5pt
Symbol: 18pt
Sub-symbol: 12pt
Styles (Defaults):
Text: Times
Functions: Times
Variables: Times, italic
L. C. Greek: Symbol, italic
U. C. Greek: Symbol
Symbols: Symbol
Matrix-Vector: Times, italic
Numbers: Times
