Spacing around MathType equations in Pages

Increasing the line spacing for the paragraph doesn't fix the problem - see the second paragraph in the image referenced above.

On a side note, look at the spacing between the equation and the period. It's astounding that Apple advertises MathType integration as a feature when the quality is so poor compared to LaTeX and Word.

It is not possible to change the line spacing of just one line within a paragraph.

Nevertheless, it is possible to divide the line before the equation, the line containing the equation, and the line after the equation into three paragraphs (each separate from the text above and below) and to mess around with the line spacing settings. This requires turning a paragraph containing a single equation into five paragraphs with four distinct line spacings. Further, the appropriate line spacings differ depending on the contents of the equation: subscripts, parentheses, summations, etc. Once you've done this throughout an entire document, you'll prefer LaTeX, Word, or even crayon to Pages and MathType.

The MathType support folks offered a partial remedy:

1) Close MathType
2) Open /Users/~home/Library/Preferences/MathType 6 Preferences with a text editor
3) In the {Windows} section, change the PicturePadding setting from 2 to 0.

Equations created after this fix will look substantially better. See the grab at http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/6681/spacing2.jpg.

Unfortunately, the line spacing problem persists. In the second paragraph from the above image, line spacing is increased to 1.3. The presence of the equation unnecessarily alters the distance between the third and fourth lines. The problem remains no matter how high the line spacing is. In a document containing a number of inline equations, the net effect is awkward, "jagged" line spacing.

For comparison purposes, here's an example of the same text in LaTeX with line spacing set to 1.3: http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/286/spacing3.jpg. The irregular line spacing is far less pronounced.

Here's the final answer from the MathType folks (verbatim): "There is no solution for that issue."

I've submitted the issue to Apple via the Pages feedback mechanism. For now, Pages with MathType is utterly worthless unless you only use displayed equations.

Here's the same text in Word: http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7563/spacing4.jpg. As you can see, the line spacing is as regular as that in LaTeX. Contrary to your assertion, the result is "good."

If the math support is truly an afterthought, perhaps Apple and the MathType folks shouldn't advertise the feature so prominently: http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/.