How to write reports and books in Mathematica
in [Mathematica]
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From: Vince Virgilio on 12 May 2010 07:32 On May 11, 6:27 am, Helen Read <h...(a)together.net> wrote: SNIP > My point is that with the vast number (easily in the thousands) of > Mathematica notebooks I deal with over the course of an academic year, > these sorts of problems are extremely rare. I find Mathematica 7.0.1 to > be extremely stable. I wonder if there is something unusual about your > set-up, or with your specific use of Mathematica, that is causing problem= s. > > -- > Helen Read > University of Vermont I respectfully submit that these numbers can mislead. Student lab-type use does not represent industrial use and pressure. Just now, in Mathematica 7.0.1, I copied an evaluation of SystemInformation[] to WRI Technical Support as an attached notebook. A few minutes later, I opened the sent message, and then the attached notebook. I switched tabs in the SystemInformation[] output, and Mathematica blew a gasket. Up comes a Windows "debug" dialog, and down goes all of Mathematica. Good thing I wasn't hours into a grid job, as I have been before. One could easily take this as a sharp lesson to not do more than one very important thing at a time in Mathematica. Vince Virgilio
From: Bill Rowe on 12 May 2010 07:33 On 5/11/10 at 6:28 AM, partensky(a)gmail.com (michael partensky) wrote: >I agree with Alexei. This is the most disappointing part in using M. >for teaching and publishing. Is there a bulletproof way for >protecting the nb files from corruption? No, there is no bulletproof way of protecting files from corruption from any application on modern computer systems. Power interruptions or other system glitches can corrupt files totally independent of the app that created them whether open or not at the time of the event. Since any file is an arbitrary sequence of bytes, there is no obvious way to examine a particular file short of opening it in the app that created it to determine if the file is corrupt.
From: Kevin J. McCann on 12 May 2010 07:31 You are right. There is little in the tutorial sense about the use of StyleSheets that goes beyond the simplest examples. Wolfram has "promised" that said tutorial/documentation has been forthcoming since Version 6, but I haven't seen it yet. I use Mathematica for ALL my class notes (physics grad and undergrad), and I find that the typesetting, particularly equations, is far superior to any other word processing system. In addition, of course, Mathematica can actually evaluate, plot, help with the derivations, etc. With the addition of the Dynamic stuff, animations are also pretty straightforward. All that said, I do believe that Mathematica COULD be the wave of the future for technical writing, but it seems that that last little bit that makes it easy to use in the word processing sense is not there, and, judging by the fact that we still haven't seen it after over two years, and that you, I, and others keep asking questions like yours, does not seem to be very high on the priority list either. Kevin
From: Peltio on 12 May 2010 07:31 Il 09-May-10, David Park ha detto : > Per, > > This can be approached at different levels. > > First, I'm not familiar with the capabilities and pricing of the various > versions of Mathematica but, if you can manage it and plan to do a lot of > technical work, get up to date with the latest version and keep up to date. > There is a world of difference between Version 7 and Version 5. The dynamics > and improved graphics extend the ability to communicate by an order of > magnitude - or more. My biggest gripe when using Mathematica as a word processor was the lack of tables and columns in the basic layout of a notebook. Having everything in just one single column was so 1800s ... I remember some package or add-on could be used to add two-columns capability to Mathematica (in fact, I believe that many books on Mathematica, like Roman Maeder's were written with something like that), but I believe such a basic functionality should be built-in, in order for everyone to take advantage of it. Has this been added in the latest versions of Mathematica? I don't remember to have seen it advertised anywhere. It would be nice to have a "columns" or "table" entry in the Format menu that makes the notebook from the cursor onward a two (or n) column table. In this way it would be possible to have text on one side and code and output on the other. Or to have multicolum text (eventually flowing from one column to the other if suitable options are given). Is it so difficul to add such a functionality in the form of a new Layout[] construct?
From: Nasser M. Abbasi on 13 May 2010 07:24
"Kevin J. McCann" <Kevin.McCann(a)umbc.edu> wrote in message news:hse3j9$327$1(a)smc.vnet.net... > > I use Mathematica for ALL my class notes (physics grad and undergrad), and > I > find that the typesetting, particularly equations, is far superior to > any other word processing system. It is definitely better than things like Microsoft Word and equation editor, but I still find using Scientific word (SW) which produces Latex as final output much easier to use to typeset my reports with. SW is all GUI, many more options for typesetting (it is designed just for that part) and for me it is much faster and easier to type math equations into it, and the final output looks better. (You can't beat Latex quality for final output). I'd like one day to do the final report I am working on in Mathematica as well, much easier, all in one place, but it is not there for me, may be in version 8 this will be improved. So, now I do the "computing part" in Mathematica, copy any results over, and write the final report and in SW. --Nasser |