Product Philosophy

Scientific WorkPlace Scientific Word and Scientific Notebook are designed to increase productivity for anyone who writes technical documents, especially those containing mathematics. They are perfect for writers in all technical fields: mathematics, physics, engineering, chemistry, computer science, economics, finance, statistics, medical research, operations research, logic, and more.

Logical Design SeparatesContent and Appearance

Our approach, known as logical design, separates the creative process of writing from the mechanical process of formatting. You apply tags to text to say what the text is; the software handles the job of formatting it. Logical design leads to a more consistent and attractive document appearance because choices of fonts, spacing, emphasis, and other aspects of format are applied automatically. Separating the processes of creating and formatting a document combines the best of the online and print worlds. You concentrate on writing a correct paper; our software makes it a beautiful paper. Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Word come with over 150 predefined document shells. Over 20 shells are available with Scientific Notebook.

Logical Design Is a New Way of Working

When you use a WYSIWYG system, you constantly give commands that affect the appearance of the content. You select text and then choose a font, a font size, or a typeface. You apply alignment commands such as center, left justify, and right justify. To center an equation, for example, you select it and choose the center alignment. In a logical system, formatting commands are replaced by commands that define the logical structure of the content instead of its appearance. Rather than center text, you create a title, a section head, or a displayed equation by applying tags to information in the document. The format of the title, the alignment of section heads, and the alignment of displayed equations are all determined separately by the properties of the tags you use. In Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Word, tag properties are determined by the document's typesetting specifications (a collection of commands that define the way the document appears when you produce it with LaTeX typesetting) and by the style (a collection of commands that define the way the document appears onscreen and when you produce it without LaTeX typesetting.) In Scientific Notebook, the tag properties are determined by the style only, since it does not include LaTeX typesetting.

Also, WYSIWYG systems divide documents into pages according to their anticipated appearance in print. To see an entire line, you often have to scroll horizontally because the screen dimensions and page dimensions do not match. In a logical system, working with pages is unnecessary, because the division of a document into pages has no connection to the document's logical structure. Thus, on the screen Scientific WorkPlace, Scientific Word and Scientific Notebook break lines to fit the window. If you resize the window, the text is reshaped to fit it.

Logical Design Ensures a Beautiful Document Appearance

Our emphasis on logical structure does not ignore the fact that documents must still be printed in a readable, organized, and visually pleasing format, nor does it ignore the fact that you may not always need publication-quality output. With version 4 of Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Word, you can preview and print your documents in two ways. You can compile, preview, and print your documents with LaTeX to obtain a high-quality, typeset appearance, or you can preview and direct print without typesetting for a near-WYSIWYG appearance. With Scientific Notebook, only direct printing is available.

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