Type calligraphic letters in Microsoft Office Equation Editor

Solution 1:

Some background.

In the current version of Windows Word if you use LaTex directly instead of the "UnicodeMath" that Word's current equation editor originally used. If you use, say \mathcal{P} using that feature, Word inserts a "Mathematical Script Character P", Unicode U+1D4AB. These Script characters can be inserted from Word's menu of Characters in Equation->Symbols.

The glyph for that codepoint in the Cambria Math typeface that Word uses is "simpler" than the examples you give, more like the ones in the typeface Euclid Math One referenced by the article you referenced.

If that's good enough for you, in the current version of Windows Word you can also insert that character when using UnicodeMath (rather than LaTex) using \scriptP ( \scriptp for the lowercase version). If your copy of Word does not have those Math Autocorrects, you should be able to add those autocorrects yourself on your own copy of word, but you will need to check that your copy of the Cambria Math typeface has the correct characters.

A key question is whether selecting from Equation->Symbols or typing the autocorrect is "more convenient".

Here, I can also use \scriptP etc. within the Windows OneNote equation editor, the current version of Mac Word (365) and the current version of Mac OneNote. But I don't think this is currently available on the Web-based versions, and I don't know how you would add autocorrects for OneNote on any platform.

If you had to use calligraphic versions of letters from another typeface (say, Lucida Calligraphy, the problem seems to me that you would need to insert

'<the character>'

in the equation, and I'm not sure you could do that easily using Math Autocorrect, because it does not let you define a rich text replacement (with the typeface info). It may be possible, though I suspect some research would be needed, to define the replacement as a chunk of OMath code. If not, you could define it as a regular rich text Autocorrect and use that instead on both Windows and Mac Word, but I don't know whether there is any equivalent on OneNote.