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I have been using Mathematica for almost a year, and the most indispensable feature in Mathematica to me has been the ability to write really nice documents and print them into PDF or TEX files.

In fact, because of the escape button feature ( i.e. $\boxed{\text{esc}}$ b $\boxed{\text{esc}}$ instantaneously prints $\beta$ and $\boxed{\text{esc}}$ un $\boxed{\text{esc}}$ prints $\cup$) I have become so comfortable typing mathematics, that I have almost completely stopped using a piece paper and pencil to do exercises in math texts. I love that I can save all my work on my computer, so that I can reference at a later date. But, the glory days have come to an end because my Mathematica software licenses is out of date!

However, I still have my MATLAB and MuPad and I never stopped using them for certain computations. Indeed, I feel more comfortable programming in MATLAB/MuPad than in Mathematica.

Therefore, my question is "how can I use MATLAB or MuPad as a math text editor?" I am hoping to find a quick and efficient way to incorporate math equations into my notes using MATLAB. I want to be able to see the symbols instantaneously, opposed to using $\LaTeX$ where I have to wait until I print the document to see the text in its true format. Does anyone have any ideas for how I can do this? Or, does anyone know a good article I could read as a reference to text editing in MATLAB/MuPad? Thanks for your time.

JimmyJackson
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    I can't answer your specific question, but you might want to check out LyX. – dfeuer Jul 09 '13 at 00:04
  • @dfeuer Im checking it out right now, thanks. – JimmyJackson Jul 09 '13 at 00:07
  • @dfeuer I just watched a Demo of the LyX Software, and I think that this is going to work! I am downloading the software right now, thanks a lot! – JimmyJackson Jul 09 '13 at 00:19
  • Good luck. Another system you should probably check out is SAGE, but I don't actually know too much about it. – dfeuer Jul 09 '13 at 00:28
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    Although understandable, I fear your impulse is misguided, at least at-this-moment-in-history. TeX stuff currently dominates. My advice would be to learn how to cope. In the "science-fiction future" (which I suspect will never quite arrive) no one will have to cope with mark-up language issues... but... :) Srsly, all these mark-up language issues are not hard. LaTeX was particularly designed to "protect" users from the underlying issues. True, by now it's a bit archaic, but, still, it's not so hard... and currently is industry-standard. So... there-we-are. – paul garrett Jul 09 '13 at 00:56
  • @paulgarrett Your right, in today's math and science world it is necessary to know how to use LaTeX to edit documents. I guess what matter is the TeX editior you chose to use that matters. Previously, I used Mathematica as my primary text editor, and saved documents as tex files if Mathematica didn't offer a certain text or symbol. Then I would edit the code in TexStudio, but TexStudio alone was inefficient for letting me to visualize the math as I wrote. In, short I think that LyX ( a TeX editor ), will do the trick. So, after all LaTeX is here to stay, but TexStudio is out and LyX is in! :-D – JimmyJackson Jul 09 '13 at 01:57
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    As far as Matlab goes, the TeX and LaTeX (and typography in general) support is pretty bad and full of bugs -even more so on OS X surprisingly. It's great for coding, but a real pain to make anything look nice. This may change eventually, but the current state of affairs is not pretty. For now you might look at the publish function and this article. But don't get your hopes up. – horchler Jul 09 '13 at 16:32

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dfeuer, suggested using LyX which is a $\TeX$ editor that you can download at www.lyx.org. I downloaded and started using LyX a couple hours ago and it is working great!

I should clarify, that in my original question I was basically using Mathematica as an ad hoc $\TeX$ editor. I would write up all of my notes in a Mathematica notebook file (*.nb), and then I would save them as PDFs (bypassing the need for $\LaTeX$), ultimately I would end up with a nice looking PDF document of my notes. Othertimes, when Mathematica was missing a $\LaTeX$ symbol of font, I would save my notebook files as .tex files, and then I would do further editing on them in TexStudio (another $\TeX$ Editor requiring $\LaTeX$ ).

LyX, is a $\TeX$ editor (or document processor) that allows you to type a $\LaTeX$ commands such as \beta, while it instantaneously replaces the command with the Greek letter $\beta$. LyX files are not actually $\TeX$ files they are saved as (*.lyx) files. When you are finished writing the document you can print it in to a prescripted pdf file (*.ps), and when you open it with Acrobat Distiller it produces, a nice PDF. LyX has a lot of cool features you can watch a demo of it here.If you are already familiar with $\LaTeX$ then it is pretty much self explanatory, and the documentation is well written. Nonetheless you might want to check out this quick tutorial here. Also, you can save graphics in MATLAB as bitmap files (*.bmp), and incorporate them into your LyX files, you end up with nice crisp graphics this way.

I hope that this is helpful, it was quite helpful for me.

JimmyJackson
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