How to write reports and books in Mathematica
in [Mathematica]
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From: Murray Eisenberg on 13 May 2010 07:25 Unless you don't know LaTeX, or do know it but don't regard it as a "word processing system", then surely you're joking about Mathematica being "far superior to any other word processing system." Mathematica cannot touch LaTeX in typesetting documents to publication standards with technical content. To mention just a few LaTeX strengths: correct sizes of large delimiters and math operators; correct discrimination in typesetting in-line mathematics vs. display mathematics (e.g., with respect to positioning of subscripts and superscripts for integral signs and summation signs); flexibility in formatting tables and matrices; easy internal labeling and references to theorems, figures, etc.; easy handling and flexible formatting of bibliographies and references to them; smart splitting of text into justified lines (if you want justification) and smart division of the document into pages; easy handling of multiple languages within a single document (if that's relevant). What's more, LaTeX allows its user to focus primarily upon the content and organizational structure of the document, not upon the appearance of the document. The price is no ability to evaluate mathematical expressions directly within the document, or to provide a "live" document to the reader. Of course LaTeX is a mark-up language, not a WYSIWIG "word processor". And I have to admit that for a quick job, it's often easier for me to use Mathematica to knock off a document. But very, very seldom are the results anywhere near as good-looking -- and correctly typeset by recognized standards -- as what, with a big more investment of time, I can accomplish with LaTeX. On 5/12/2010 7:31 AM, Kevin J. McCann wrote: > > ...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.... -- Murray Eisenberg murray(a)math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305
From: David Bailey on 13 May 2010 07:23 Per R=F8nne wrote: > Dominic <miliotodc(a)rtconline.com> wrote: > >> Based on what you wrote I gather you're not familiar with StyleSheets in >> Mathematica. That's what you need to learn how to use. You either use >> an existing Stylesheet or create your own. The StyleSheet then has >> various cell templates that you choose to enter various formatted data >> into your notebook. For example if you wanted to enter a block of >> descriptive text, you would choose the "text" style, and then as you >> enter text into that cell style, it's formatted as simple text although >> embedded math can be entered as well. There is a whole process for >> managing, editing, creating, and using stylesheets in Mathematica. For >> example, if I just wanted to startout using the Book stylesheet, I would >> choose File/New/Styled Notebook/Book. That loads a default stylesheet >> in a default "book" style. But you would need to understand how to use >> those styles and edit the styles and I'm not aware of a good reference >> for that. > > I have come a long way since I wrote my original post, partly through > private mails partly through guessing and reading in Stephen Wolfram's > "The Mathematica Book 5th Edition". I have now solved my original > problems but of course there's lots of stuff I haven't been through yet. > > I'm still waiting for answers from Wolfram as to whether I can update my > Mathematica 5 TE which has been "discontinued and no longer supported". > Otherwise, I'll just use my old TE on my old G4/867 Macintosh running > MacOS X 10.4 'Tiger' [I can then also run Classic apps]. I won't give up > my Snow Leopard on my newer computers and I can wait the 15 months it > will take for me to be able to purchase a Student's Edition. =A390 the > price will then be, rather than =A3195 for a "Home Edition". > -- > Per Erik R=F8nne > http://www.RQNNE.dk > Errare humanum est, sed in errore perseverare turpe > I wonder if Snow Leopard can run VirtualBox (free to download). This would let you run a viritual Windows or Linux inside it. Running the appropriate version of Mathematica in that environment might be a good work around, but I would check with Wolfram Research first. David Bailey http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk
From: David Park on 13 May 2010 07:25 The Presentations package does have such a functionality. It has formatting commands for laying out material on the page. You can see some of this in the Roger Williams video that was posted earlier in this thread. This is all designed for presenting mathematical material to readers and suppressing strings of input/output cells or boiler-plate specifications. This may not be exactly what you are thinking of. It is not a method of having side-by-side independent cells. You can have TextCell or ExpressionCell inside a Mathematica expression, Row for example, but they seem to always get evaluated. There doesn't seem to be a way to generate independent cells within an expression, that can be independently evaluated. But, if you want to present defined calculations to a reader, Presentations has twocolumn, comment and command statements that allow you to layout a two column display with comments (or even some active statements) on one side and "commands" on the other side. The commands show the result of an evaluation and in a tooltip (if you want that) that shows the unevaluated input statements that produced the output. There are also commands for setting up buttons either as a cell, or in Inline text cells to generate displays. The buttons are designed to either generate a display in the next cell or as a free standing window. There are also constructions to generate a structure of buttons, which can be clicked through to go through the steps of a longer derivation or proof. The reader can again generate some of the "page" steps in separate windows so that various sections of a derivation can be compared side by side. Setting up such displays, however, does involve a certain amount of detailed work because each step has to be defined. David Park djmpark(a)comcast.net http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/ From: Peltio [mailto:peltio(a)twilight.zone] 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: Kevin J. McCann on 14 May 2010 05:33 Murray, Here we have a difference of opinion. LaTeX and all the other Tex's require that "code" be written, which is subsequently processed to generate the final output. To me this is not at all natural and I observe that others who use it are frequently asking "how do I ..."; whereas, Mathematica allows me to focus on the equations and words. Now, I know that with LaTeX there is "infinite" control over how things look; so, you can make it look just right, but, for me at least, the default look of equations and text in Mathematica is just fine, and I really don't want to spend time making it look more right. That said, I rely on the Stylesheet to determine the look and feel of the document, and, as I said in an earlier post, this is not at all intuitive. So, here is where I have to spend my time, but once the template (Stylesheet) is done, then that's it. After that documents are simple, especially equations, which with the keyboard shortcuts are a snap. Just my take, Kevin Murray Eisenberg wrote: > Unless you don't know LaTeX, or do know it but don't regard it as a > "word processing system", then surely you're joking about Mathematica > being "far superior to any other word processing system." > >
From: Bill Rowe on 14 May 2010 05:34
On 5/13/10 at 7:23 AM, dave(a)removedbailey.co.uk (David Bailey) wrote: >I wonder if Snow Leopard can run VirtualBox (free to download). This >would let you run a viritual Windows or Linux inside it. Running the >appropriate version of Mathematica in that environment might be a >good work around, but I would check with Wolfram Research first. It is possible to run VirtualBox under Snow Leopard. And once installed, it is possible to set up either Windows or Linux running as a virtual machine with VirtualBox. And since these virtual machines running a different operating system would look no different than a real machine running the same operating system, there should be no difficulty with running the appropriate version of Mathematica that way. But... There is no free lunch. There is an overhead associated with running a foreign operating system under VirtualBox or one of the commercial alternatives. And for processor intensive applications such as Mathematica, you may not get what you would consider acceptable performance unless you have a machine with lots of memory and a fairly fast processor. One other thing to note, VirtualBox and the commercial alternatives (Parallels and VMWare Fusion) run on the newer Apple machines with an Intel processor, not the older machines with a PPC processor. |