What’s the last Mac OS that supported Pages ‘09 and MathType?

The hurdles are too great for you to retreat from Ventura to Mojave, the last operating system to support the 32-bit iWork '09 suite. The defacto math syntax is now either LaTeX or MathML.

First of all, Mojave was only shipped on Late-2018, or the single TrueTone 2019 MacBook Airs. You would need an older Mac capable of installing Mojave 10.14.6, and nothing newer than the mentioned Air models would support a download of the Mojave installer.

Unless you have a MathType 6.7h installer laying around, the vendor (Design Science) was acquired by Wirris a few years back and any MathType support now is an annual $60 subscription with only Microsoft 365 (Windows) or Google Docs support. They have abandonded Mac, and may not offer the older MathType installer at any price.

The current Microsoft Word 16.72 uses UnicodeMath and LaTeX for entering equations, and when one uses the current Pages equation editor, it accepts a subset of LaTeX or MathML syntax and translates either into an embedded MathML object that survives the export to Word .docx and reopening in MS Word.

Apple documents what syntax is supported in the Pages/Numbers/Keynote equation editors in the article:

About LaTeX and MathML support in Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and iBooks Author

You want to download that linked blahtex PDF on the first page of the above link as it shows what specific LateX syntax is supported in the Equation Editor.

And, if you need help with entering LaTeX equations in the Equation Editor, post in this community and I will help you as I have done for others.

Buckmo wrote:

I am a math teacher and MathType is essential for my work so I feel your pain. My information below may or may not help you (old news??) but others certainly have similar problems.

A couple of years ago my iMac crashed but the hard drive survived. The drive data was installed into a MacBook Pro but MathType didn't work. After some research I had the vendor de-grade the MacBook OS to High Sierra (10.13.6) and my MathType app (6.7h) works perfectly again. That is, I am able to produce whatever is needed in the MathType app, select whatever part is needed, then copy/paste onto a Pages (ver 6.1.1) document. From there I can move and resize without affecting existing items on the document (after selecting Text Wrap - None in Pages).

However, a growing amount of other software (such as browsers and banking software) are delivering automatic messages ("Please update your operating system") suggesting I upgrade my Mac OS because High Sierra is outdated. Yuck.

The security protocols in macOS High Sierra are far outdated and deprecated by most online destinations that require higher security. That can be fixed only by a much newer operating system, one probably unsupported by the hardware you are using for High Sierra.

It seems to me that a company (such as Apple) producing a browser (such as Chrome) would add value by identifying and developing compatible software (such as a high-end math editor) and all items would be upgraded simultaneously.

Apple is simply not in the Math editor business with so many third-party alternatives (mostly online) offering various Math equation support. Wiris (who purchased MathType) took it to a subscription model and is only available as a plug-in for MS Word on Windows, Mac, or Google Workspace. MathType is available for $1.06 per student per year for the preceding application coverage.

I am not an Apple employee nor subcontractor and cannot speak for Apple internal business decisions.

I am a math teacher and MathType is essential for my work so I feel your pain. My information below may or may not help you (old news??) but others certainly have similar problems.

A couple of years ago my iMac crashed but the hard drive survived. The drive data was installed into a MacBook Pro but MathType didn't work. After some research I had the vendor de-grade the MacBook OS to High Sierra (10.13.6) and my MathType app (6.7h) works perfectly again. That is, I am able to produce whatever is needed in the MathType app, select whatever part is needed, then copy/paste onto a Pages (ver 6.1.1) document. From there I can move and resize without affecting existing items on the document (after selecting Text Wrap - None in Pages).

However, a growing amount of other software (such as browsers and banking software) are delivering automatic messages ("Please update your operating system") suggesting I upgrade my Mac OS because High Sierra is outdated. Yuck.

It seems to me that a company (such as Apple) producing a browser (such as Chrome) would add value by identifying and developing compatible software (such as a high-end math editor) and all items would be upgraded simultaneously.

One of the things that I suggest that you do is take a screen short of the equation editor window with the finished syntax. Zoom the Pages window so the embedded equation is usefully visible, and then drag and drop that screen shot below it. Then screenshot both together. Like this:

and save these examples in your Pictures folder under an EQN folder. This will be a quicker reference to how you have done something in the past and any particular finesse needed in the process.

Molly,

Here is your aligned equation stack. I have created a newcommand to provide the long underlines. You can open right-click on this image of the equation editor syntax and save it to your Mac where you can use Quick Look or Preview to see it in larger text.

and the equation as shown in Pages v13 at 150% enlargement:

Everything that I have demonstrated here is in the blahtex PDF guide inherent to the Apr 20th post and its link. You will need that PDF document if you are to grasp the allowed equation editor syntax.

You are welcome.

If you need additional spacing on either side of the equation, you could use \quad instead of the single space \ symbol. The blahtex PDF does not show you the actual usage of operators that may take curly brace arguments like \frac{numerator}{denominator} so you will likely need more documentation on those operators. Look at this PDF which also has many Math symbols (some restricted to AMSMath package) and shows the curly brace expansion usage for some.

I am starting to research online Math tools that may be able to generate content (without complicated syntax) that can be inlined in Pages, and portable across document architectures. That may prove futile…

Just thought I would mention that Wiris offers MathType 7 as an add-in for Microsoft 365 (Word) and Office 2021 (Word) for Mac, (or Windows), or Google Docs. It is an annual $57.50 subscription (with a 20% discount for academics). If you really wanted to switch from Pages… 🤨

And here is a site where you draw the equation and the integral AI generates the LaTeX or MathML syntax that you could copy/paste into the Pages equation editor.

Here is an Iₙ Identity matrix using bmatrix:

I_n = \begin{bmatrix}
  1 & 0 & 0 & \dots & 0\\
  0 & 1 & 0 & \dots & 0\\
  0 & 0 & 1 & \dots & 0\\
  \vdots & \vdots & \vdots & \ddots & \vdots\\
  0 & 0 & 0 & \dots & 1
\end{bmatrix}

The pmatrix uses parentheses, the Bmatrix does double brackets, the vmatrix vertical lines, and the Vmatrix doubles those. The smallmatrix alledgedly inserts a tiny matrix in line with text but I couldn't get it to work.

You can always post back on this thread, or if Apple has locked it after some elapsed time, start another main post and provide a link back to this current post as a reference. You may want to bookmark this post in your browser too.

Have a great week, Molly.

Remember that Pages equation editor only supports what the blahtex converter does, and that excludes most La[TeX] packages that Overleaf may quietly include such as tabularray that allows you to use \begin{tabular}{c|c c c c} syntax.

Show me that screen capture of what you created in Overleaf, and maybe I can reverse engineer that in Pages equation editor, or determine an alternative approach.