2.1 The basics  (Page 4/5)

You can press Ctrl+A (or ⌘+A on Macs) to select your entire expression. You can also double-click in the white box outside of your expression to select it all. If you want to select only a portion of the expression, hold the Shift key down and use the left and right arrow buttons, or double click on the operator of just the portion you want to select (i.e. double click + to select everything within the plus operator, or double click on two multiplied objects to just select that product).

Copy your expression by pressing Ctrl+C ( ⌘+C ). Open your module and click on a segment to edit. Press Ctrl+V ( ⌘+V ) to paste the MathML code directly into your module.

Why can't i select the mathml with my mouse?

There are two ways to select expressions within the editor. By using one of the methods above, you copy the underlying MathML code. This is what you need to copy MathML code over to a module, or to select a portion of your code to delete.

By clicking and dragging over an expression within the edit box, you select only the text. Like any other text you enter, if you copy part of your code and paste it as an argument of an operator within the editing area, the MathML editor will correctly parse it and generate the underlying code. This is also called " wrapping " your existing math.

Deleting expressions

There are several ways to delete part or all of your expression. You can either move your cursor to the context of the portion of your expression you want to delete, then push Delete , or you can select the portion of your code you want to delete, and press Delete .

To delete $bx$ from our expression $ax^2+bx+c$ , move your cursor until the context is only $bx$ . The $bx$ portion of the expression should have a light grey background, and the path bar should read Path: / plus / times .

Press Delete once, and that part of your expression should be highlighted in blue.

Press Delete again and that portion will delete.

You should be left with a blank block where the expression $bx$ used to be. By clicking Delete you have deleted the content of one argument of the plus operator, but not the argument itself. You can type in a different expression that will replace $bx$ , or if you simply want the expression $ax^2+c$ , press Delete one more time to delete the block. Notice that the context automatically moves to the next argument, which in our case is the ci element $c()$ .

Creating expressions with the toolbar menus

The toolbar menus are only activated when something is selected within the editing box. This can be either an entire operator, like the expression $bx$ , or it could be just one argument of an operator, like $b()$ or an empty block. Since the editing box contains only an empty block when you first open it, the block is automatically highlighted and the toolbar menus are accessible.

However, note that if you select a portion of your MathML expression and then insert an operator from the toolbar, the selected portion will be overwritten. The operator will not appear behind or in front of the selected expression. New users are often confused by this behavior. Essentially, keyboard input and the toolbar function in different ways.