If you have ever had to enter mathematical data in a document, your choice of application to do so was limited to complicated editors that work with LaTEX, Framemaker, or Microsoft Word. Framemaker is certainly up to the job, but except for its limits in the area of which formulas you can enter, it is simply not available on Mac OS X. Unix, Linux, and Windows are all served, but Mac OS X isn’t. For most scientific users that is not a problem, but for a book designer it is. Furthermore, Framemaker’s support for symbols is somewhat limited. Word is even worse. It is clearly not designed to be used as a scientific editing tool. Formula and symbols support is thin, and there’s no way to put your design really ‘right’. Enter Wolfram Research’s Publicon. Publicon uses Mathematica’s presentation power to support every aspect of the scientific publishing process.
Some of the key features of Publicon are support for easy mathematical typesetting for equations and formulas, custom fonts for special characters and symbols, palette-based interface, stylesheets, automatic numbering of headings, chapters, equations, graphics, etc. Furthermore, Publicon supports the creation of a library and end notes or citations, and conversion of documents into LaTEX, HTML, XML, and MathML, and of course the hyperlinking between documents for web-usage.
It is no surprise that Publicon is every way as powerful as Mathematica when it comes to the support the program offers for functions, formulas, equations, and other mathematical and scientific notations. Mathematica as well has some pretyy powerful publishing features up its sleeve, but Publicon is really aimed at publishing, while Mathematica is not. The main difference between Mathematica and Publicon is you can calculate with the former, while you can’t with the latter. Another difference is that Publicon is somewhat easier to understand, although only by an inch.
When opening Publicon the first time, the user is greeted by an assistant which has a feature tour readily set up for you to read. The tour is a short overview of Publicon’s features, palettes and capabilities. Some attention is given to how to perform specific tasks as well. Once the tour has finished, you’re on your own, except for the help function of course. The help function does contain a complete manual. Still, I would have preferred a paper manual as a reference, simply because the program offers so many different options, that a reference is absolutely no luxury.
Entering formulas with Publicon is easy enough. It is a matter of clicking the appropriate icons in the palettes and filling in the blanks. The formulas are not evaluated or calculated. If you want to have that functionality, you’d better buy Mathematica. Formulas that need to be entered in an evaluated or calculated form, can be pasted right from within Mathematica. The formulas you enter in Publicon, on the other hand, can also be pasted in Mathematica and calculated there.
The most impressive feature in my opinion is the support an author gets for entering his own details, end notes and citations. All these “extras” are added to a document using dialogue windows which have options or tabs with further settings themselves. Writing a scientific paper and laying out the paper so it complies with specific standards is easy to do this way. In fact, Publicon comes standard with a few templates that comply with for example BioMed article layouts.
Once the document has been satisfactorily set up, the Publicon format—-which is a type of XML in its own right—-can be exported to LaTEX, HTML, MathML, or a number of XML dialects. MathML is a web-based notation standard that has been approved by the W3C but which isn’t supported by all browsers yet. Safari, for example, doesn’t support MathML. However, Publicon is so good at converting into the other formats, you may never really need MathML anyway.
Publicon is not everyone’s editor, but to scientific publishers, I expect it to become an industry standard. Its power and feature-richness far exceed that of Framemaker’s in the area of formulas and mathematical and other symbologies. Its integration with Mathematica make it a logical choice for those people who already use Mathematica as their calculation powerhouse. And the cross-publishing features make it an easy choice for anyone having to publish simultaneously to paper, the web, and the screen during presentations.
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