I ran into a problem with TeX4PPT the other day.

* As an aside, TeX4PPT inside PowerPoint is probably the fastest way to make scalable figures and math. There is just no way that any other drawing tool even comes close to the speed with which simple diagrams can be made using PowerPoint. Since the LaTeX people seem completely uninterested in the end user, there is basically no choice in the matter. My work flow these days involves LyX initial drafts with LaTeX final drafts for papers and PowerPoint with TeX4PPT for presentations, using pen input for the initial drawings. Not ideal, but getting there.

But I ran into a problem where every time I saved any LaTeX expression with the symbol \(\gamma\), it turns into a degree symbol, that little circle °. It turns out \(\gamma\) is codepoint U+00B0 in the font cmmi10. But PowerPoint’s default master template has gone stupid, and never wants to change the font type of just that one codepoint, so it goes with the Arial glyph there, which is the degree symbol. It doesn’t help that LaTeX is stuck in the stone age and doesn’t know about Unicode, instead using about 20 different fonts with overlapping codepoints to make the expressions.

So in the end I had to carefully recreate a clean master template in PowerPoint. For future use, it is saved here.