How to write a "proper" math document
McHale, Paul
I am an engineer who lacks the audacity to claim any special awareness in math, but do find what skills I have very useful. One of the tasks engineers have is to leave a trail of bread crumbs for others to follow. This document ends up being design calculations (minimally) and a process of discovery (ideally). I have found myself and other engineers often understand what we are doing, but are far worse at communicating it. I agree this indicates a gap in understanding to some degree. I think it is also true that we can think of Moby Dick but don't have the proper writing skills to convey it as a novel. The result is a mixture of ineffective writing styles to document work.
Does anyone have a set of rules or a style document for how to write a document that will be mathematically oriented? I have found some information. A common set of tasks I do include:
Document(minimal)
1. Highlight original datasheet pdf using PDF XChange (free)
2. Use screen hunter to capture relevant part of PDF and past into notebook
3. Use above information to as input data to perform calculations
4. Mix calculations with explanation of what and why
Discovery(ideal)
1. Describe existing solution or foundation from which we are going to extrapolate
2. Explain (charts, data, verbage) why this is insufficient
3. Show what we are changing to achieve better results
Maybe the discovery could almost be called a white paper. What I am looking for is rules such as when to refer to an equation by number (can Mathematica do this?) or when we should just "in line" the equation within a sentence. Any such rules would be appreciated. Once document I have found is:
http://ems.calumet.purdue.edu/mcss/kevinlee/mathwriting/writingman.pdf
While very good, it is not mathematica centric. I.e. Is there way to quickly open and close cells since programming cells reduce document readability for the Mathematica un-challenged :).
I'm sure there is much more to the Mathematica front end than what I am using.
Paul McHale | Electrical Engineer, Energetics Systems | Excelitas Technologies Corp.
Phone: +1 937.865.3004 | Fax: +1 937.865.5170 | Mobile: +1 937.371.2828
1100 Vanguard Blvd, Miamisburg, Ohio 45342-0312 USA
Paul....@Excelitas.com
www.excelitas.com
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Thank you
E. Martin-Serrano
A possible alternative is the Presentations package by David Park. Get in
touch with the author at djm...@comcast.net or check for more info at
http://home.comcast.net/
Presentations is (IMHO) a must for Mathematica graphics development and
technical documents creation. It will save you plenty of time, ... and you
know that time is money. The problem is that only those who own a license of
Mathematica could read your "live-documents" so created, except if you
distribute them through Mathematica Player. See details for MathPlayer at
http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/howto/DeployANotebookForPlayer.html
Cheers
E. martin-Serrano
-----Mensaje original-----
De: McHale, Paul [mailto:Paul....@excelitas.com]
Enviado el: martes, 28 de junio de 2011 13:56
Para: math...@smc.vnet.net
Asunto: How to write a "proper" math document
McHale, Paul
>>touch with the author at djm...@comcast.net or check for more info at
>>http://home.comcast.net/
Thanks for the great idea. After reading this post and the post from David, I will definitely buy this package.
>>Presentations is (IMHO) a must for Mathematica graphics development and
>>technical documents creation. It will save you plenty of time, ... and you
>>know that time is money. The problem is that only those who own a license of
>>Mathematica could read your "live-documents" so created, except if you
>>distribute them through Mathematica Player. See details for MathPlayer at
>>http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/howto/DeployANotebookForPlayer.html
Distribution through Mathematica Player is problematic because the contents could be ITAR restricted. As you know: if you don't know, it is restricted. I wish there was a way to do this for ourselves. Must be a security is sue with releasing this capability into the wild.
Paul McHale | Electrical Engineer, Energetics Systems | Excelitas Technologies Corp.
Phone: +1 937.865.3004 | Fax: +1 937.865.5170 | Mobile: +1 937.371.2828
1100 Vanguard Blvd, Miamisburg, Ohio 45342-0312 USA
Paul....@Excelitas.com
www.excelitas.com
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Thank you
Bill Rowe
wrote:
>Distribution through Mathematica Player is problematic because the
>contents could be ITAR restricted. As you know: if you don't know,
>it is restricted. I wish there was a way to do this for
>ourselves. Must be a security is sue with releasing this
>capability into the
>wild.
If there is an ITAR restriction due to content, the problem is
quite a bit more than Mathematica Player. That is changing the
format from something compatible with Mathematica Player to a
static format such as PDF will would not be alter restrictions
due to ITAR at all.
magma
way to go.
Here is the direct link.
http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/DrawGraphicsPage.html
In general google: presentations mathematica
and you will also get several interesting articles in this field
dr DanW
This is important to me as the director of a research department. I am trying to find ways to get my engineers to document their work. As long as writing documentation is a separate operation from doing work (calculations, data crunching) it will always take the back seat. However, if documenting is concurrent with working I don't have to tell anybody to go back and finish the job.
Daniel
McHale, Paul
I couldn't agree more. We are struggling with the best way to document. Pasting into Word works, but is a secondary effort, as you said. I think there are two levels of writing for engineering. The first level is documenting what one has done or will do. The intent is little deviation once written. Unfortunately there is no increase in innovation by this process.
I think it is better being able to learn something from writing the documentation. This is very difficult to teach. I believe Mathematica not only supports this but is one of very packages that will even come close to preventing the duplication of effort you mention when creating documents. The engineer must be able to experiment with models and math before implementation.
I think two advancements are required. We, as engineers, need to accept the correlation between experimental writing and innovation. Too many treat the actual development as the "playground" or sandbox to experiment. I think this is prohibitively expensive. Changing documentation is cheap compared to circuit cards or distributing software. Experimenting in documentation is much faster. Care must be taken as models are always incomplete. Of course, so are first design efforts :). I'm also of the school that proper engineering starts with documentation. The actual implementation should be reduced to recipe. First design reviews should be of documentation where changes are "free". Unfortunately, the artistic/emotional side of engineers find this physically painful.
It would be very helpful if IEEE or some other body would start a set of standards for documenting engineering work. CMMI was interesting but enforces no definition of a specific process. I think engineers are untrained/unskilled in this area and could use some standards.
The second part is Mathematica needs to flow back and forth better between document (read mode for others) and development (all code visible...). This is especially true for people who don't know Mathematica. They will get lost seeing all the unfamiliar code. I find going from working with code to putting a document in presentation or readable form (hiding the code) is a lot of effort. Closing and opening code segments is too much of an effort. It would be nice to have two sets of properties, one for working mode and the other for reading mode. Just me 2c.
Paul
Paul McHale | Electrical Engineer, Energetics Systems | Excelitas Technologies Corp.
Phone: +1 937.865.3004 | Fax: +1 937.865.5170 | Mobile: +1 937.371.2828
1100 Vanguard Blvd, Miamisburg, Ohio 45342-0312 USA
Paul....@Excelitas.com
www.excelitas.com
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Thank you
-----Original Message-----
From: dr DanW [mailto:dmaxw...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2011 5:03 AM
Subject: Re: How to write a "proper" math document
Richard Fateman
It is quite simply the case that any system which requires a reader or
writer of a document to pay WRI an annual license will be rejected by
the vast majority of people, as well as any journal published by a
reputable academic/ scientific non-profit organization such as IEEE,
AMA, ACM.
It appears that Mathplayer (etc) don't do the job for what you are
talking about.
There are several competing products in this active-math document
editing framework, including web-page based products which allow (they
claim) easy call-outs to programs and programming languages without
going through Mathematica, Mathlink, etc.
Mathematica is hardly the first language of choice for most of the
world, and in spite of what you may think of its graphical, interactive,
animation (whatever) is hardly unique.
I would add (though clearly others have expressed disagreement on this
point) that embedding Mathematica semantics in numerical and some
symbolic computations would be a grave disservice to actual scientific
calculations. Consider the situation when the most important
characteristics of a formula are those locations where it is singular,
but Mathematica leaves them out because they are not part of the
"generic" solution. Or the numerical computation which should be done
to higher precision, but Mathematica displays the answer as 0.
Neglecting to mention that it really could be anything at all, just that
it has apparently lost all significance.
I am generally in favor of the notion that engineering or other
scientific/mathematical journal articles or documentation should include
material that can be cut out and pasted elsewhere, including in a
computer algebra system. Or having them be "clickable".
One way of doing this is via what is sometimes called "multivalent"
documents. See
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1998/CSD-98-999.pdf
If you look at this (circa 1998) paper, you will see that it shows, in
principle, how one can take an existing document that includes math
expressions, and via OCR and some help, present an additional layer to
the reader that provides active computation or extraction into TeX.
Constructing a paper initially in digital form removes the need for OCR,
but the multiple-layer notion seems like a good one. Whether you
consider that Mathematica provides all you need now or not, do you think
that a document prepared with version 8.0 will still "work" in a later
version? Will you be able to effortlessly attach a layer of
annotations, corrections, 3D-smell-o-vision, etc. in the future? Will
you have layers of historical versions of the past? Will you be able to
send it to a colleague who does not have a license?
RJF
dr DanW
Daniel
McHale, Paul
I think there are three levels of sharing (at least). Static data, dynamic/interactive documents and what would traditionally be called stand alone programs (Java, C#...).
Interactive documents seem to be a limited by corporate security more than technology. I.e. If Mathematica were open source/free, this would be closer to a non-issue. This is not practical. I am just trying to isolate the underlying issue. To accomplish dynamic documents, the readers need to be better secured (no keyboard input?), more obvious to the anti-Mathematica crowd (user) and easier to proliferate ($$$). Since the developer and the user share the same interface, the interface of the reader may want to have features disabled and separate menu items for execution. I.e. "Run" button in place of CTRL-A, Shift-Enter.
Stand alone programs also require the use of the developer interface. I can tell from the posts here Mathematica has become a programming environment as well where we complete complex tasks that would have been traditionally implemented in Python, Java or C#. If we share our notebooks with another Mathematica developers, this is fantastic since other developers already use the same interface. The question is how do we share such functionality with users? Without a GUI to separate the "user" from the "developer interface", this task is quite difficult.
To fill the expanding roles, maybe WRI needs to consider alternate interfaces. Maybe a GUI centric interface for distribution of programs. This is how Microsoft does .Net. Instead of WRI readers there could be a WRI runtime engine and an "EXE" that is distributed.
I wonder where WRI derives income from? My guess would be commercial sales. If this were 90% of the income, make Mathematica free to all educational institutions. Maybe research institutions as well. The further proliferation of Mathematica is likely to drive more commercial sales which could yield a net increase in income (in time).
The more I use Mathematica, the more I don't want to be without it. I also believe proliferation is a very good thing in the bigger picture. I would love to write interactive documents or distribute standalone programs. It just isn't in the immediate cards.
Paul
Paul McHale | Electrical Engineer, Energetics Systems | Excelitas Technologies Corp.
Phone: +1 937.865.3004 | Fax: +1 937.865.5170 | Mobile: +1 937.371.2828
1100 Vanguard Blvd, Miamisburg, Ohio 45342-0312 USA
Paul....@Excelitas.com
www.excelitas.com
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Thank you
-----Original Message-----
From: dr DanW [mailto:dmaxw...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, July 04, 2011 6:44 AM
Subject: Re: How to write a "proper" math document
David Reiss
tagging, take a look at
http://scientificarts.com/worklife/conference2008.html
Best,
David
AES
wrote:
I would be delighted to see this, and think it would be a very useful
contribution.
Let me add what I think would be an even more useful -- but I suppose
considerably more difficult -- Mathematica add-on.
This add-on would comprise:
1) A way to capture an executed notebook, including all its output
cells (that is, everything you see on the screen as you scroll through a
notebook, once that notebook has been executed) -- in other words a
simple Save;
2) Then a way to run this captured notebook through a totally separate
post-processor program, written in whatever, that would convert this
notebook file into a "touch-up-able" TeX (or LaTex) source file;
3) And then, a few steps of hand touch up of this TeX source file, as
needed, followed by running it through TeX or LaTeX to create a polished
PDF document.
A first, relatively trivially step toward this goal would be to simply
capture the ASCII text content of each cell in the executed document and
insert it as the content of a correspondingly named macro in the TeX
source file.
That is, each Text cell would be embedded in a \text{---} macro, each
level of Header cell in a \headerlevelnn{---} macro, and so on. We
TeXperts (or even TeXNovices) could then define our own \text{} and
\header{} macros to get the fonts, styles, spacings, and so on that we
would want for our document. Just doing this could vastly improve page
breaks, text formatting, and so on.
A second step would be to capture the content of each Output graphics
cell in the notebook as a graphics file in PDF, JPG, PNG, or whatever
format; stick this file in the same folder as the primary TeX source
file with a name like "graphictwo.pdf"; and insert a line in the primary
TeX source file saying something like
\graphic{graphictwo.pdf}
We TeXNovices could then define our own \graphic{} macro to \input this
graphic, float the graphic to the top of the page, or whatever we wanted
to do with it. (We could also hand-edit the graphic file itself in
Illustrator, should be want to.)
A third step would be a series of tweaks in which the post-processor
program, in addition to doing steps one and two, would make more
sophisticated conversions of the "innards" of text and header cells,
converting Greek letters and the like from Mathematica notation to TeX
notation, and in general doing anything that could be automated to
convert Mathematica syntax to TeX syntax.
This approach of course violates the basic Wolfram concept of do
everything -- and they really do mean *everything* -- with one tool.
I've never believed in this myself; use the right tool for the job is
more like my motto. And, the more experience I have with Mathematica
(and TeX) (and other software tools), the more I come to believe in
this. Some others agree; others don't.
AES
"McHale, Paul" <Paul....@excelitas.com> wrote:
> Looking at Mathematica's admitted origins as an authoring tool for Stephen
> Wolfram to publish his books, it's stronger points become evident. It works
> very well in the individual experiment, document and "publish" mode. Publish
> here meaning the document is indistinguishable from a PDF with static data,
> no interaction. A book. I will likely stay in the standard flow of
> experiment, document and publish. As we can see from the exchanges of
> emails, this path is sufficiently difficult to do well. Stephen just makes
> it look easy :)
With regard to this specific situation of going from notebook to "static
book", let me quote from the 3rd edition of Heikki Ruskeepaa's masterful
Mathematica Navigator. Navigator is of course "a book" -- a superb book
-- written in Mathematica.
But in Section 3.4 of this book, entitled "Writing Mathematica
Documents" and following a subsection on "Mathematica as a Writing
Tool", Ruskeepaa has a subsection which reads as follows:
==========================================
Main and Working Documents
When writing a mathematical document with Mathematica, it may be useful
to work simultaneously with two documents: a {\it main document} and a
{\it working document. The main document will grow into the final
publication, whereas all computations are done in the working document.
Mathematical results, tables, and graphics are copied from the working
document into the main document. This division into two documents may be
needed because the main document may not contain the Mathematica
commands but only the results. The working document contains all used
Mathematica commands so that all computations can easily be done again.
The working document should include the same sections as are in the
main document so that you can easily find the computations of a certain
section. Add into the working document comments about the computations,
such as any difficulties that may arise; they may be valuable if you
need to do similar computations at a later time.
When you have completed the writing project, you will then have the
main document ready to be printed and the working document that will
enable you to redo and modify computations as needed.
==========================================
Repeat: _two_ documents. And although I can't track down the exact
quote, I believe that in an earlier edition Ruskeepaa states even more
explicitly that this approach is how he wrote his book.
In a recent post I've suggested a variation on this two-document
approach: a Mathematic notebook which contains all the "text" content
(not necessarily cleanly formatted for publication) and does all the
computations, and then a post-processor (written in whatever language
you like) which intelligently converts that notebook into a TeX or LaTeX
document, which (after minor touchup) produces the book.
I believe there are two great advantages to this approach:
1) It uses the best tool for each separate task -- and thereby does
each of them better, more powerfully, AND more easily.
2) Instead of every individual who uses Mathematica having to struggle
to learn how to do both the technical computations _and_ the
publications formatting simultaneously in one tool (and instead of, as a
result, enormously complicating and messing up the syntax and interface
to Mathematica, to its substantial detriment), put the hard work of
writing the post-processor on a few skilled individuals, who know how to
do that sort of thing.
(In fact, multiple post-processors are likely to emerge and compete in
this situation -- the best results of meaningful competition.)
In any event, let's note: Even a Mathematica wizard like Heikki
Ruskeepaa ended up using a _two_ document approach -- he did NOT
docomputation and publication, all in one single notebook.
AES
> Interactive documents seem to be a limited by corporate security more than
> technology. I.e. If Mathematica were open source/free, this would be closer
> to a non-issue. This is not practical.
This the second and equally difficult problem with Mathematica. No
question whatsoever: Mathematica is a marvelous intellectual
development.
But if Mathematica had emerged from, and was continually further
developed in, an open, academic, competitive environment, with
publications, technical meetings, peer review, student involvement, and
all the other advantages that this environment can provide, rather than
a closed, quite secretive, and commercially driven enterprise, it would
be even richer than it is today.
Ask yourselves where many of the most important software tools of today
emerged from? (and whether they are free and open tools, or closed and
excessively expensive tools?) Just to cite two of these:
* Unix: The essentially open world of the original Bell Labs.
* TeX and LaTeX: Donald Knuth and his academic students and disciples.
And then all the immense swarm of freeware, shareware, and low-cost
software tools that we all enjoy today.
Chris Degnen
> Daniel,
>
> I couldn't agree more. We are struggling with the best way to
> document. Pasting into Word works, but is a secondary effort,
I plan to automate output to Word to create editable documents.
As an example of what can be done in .Net from Mathematica, the
ExcelPieChart.nb demo is very interesting...
See "Calling COM Objects" on this page, (first section):
http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/NETLink/tutorial/CallingNETFromMathematica.html
I have obtained the textbook Writing Word Macros, which gives
VBA examples for manipulating the Word object model, but if there
is any reference material or examples of the Mathematica syntax
for manipulating Word I would be interested to know of it. Thanks
David Park
The "two document" approach has both feet planted in the past. The first
"document" is really a "programmable super graphical calculator" planted in
the recent past. The second document is a static "text, equations, diagram"
document planted in 3000 year old technology.
It is as if, after the introduction of paper or papyrus media, the mode of
communication was to write drafts on paper but only publish by chiseling in
stone - ignoring the fact that it is much easier to copy and distribute
paper documents.
Similarly the second of the current "two documents" nearly completely throws
away all of the benefits of an active and dynamic mathematical medium. Such
as:
1) Generated knowledge in the form of active tools for using the ideas in
the document.
2) If everything is calculated, then the document has a high level of
self-proofing and high integrity. (Perhaps not perfect, but far better that
documents produced by word processing.) It will be more convincing to the
reader.
3) A reader can quickly verify the calculated results, try variations, or
use the material to extend the results.
4) An active and dynamic medium opens up many new ways to present and
envision concepts and information that are just plain missing in static
media.
AES, I sometimes wonder if you have ever tried to write such a document or
ever read one. You seem to be unaware of the advantages.
The solution is simple. Every technically literate person should have
Mathematica. A price of $295 (for the Home edition) is not unreasonable for
people who might at first be casual users or readers. It would probably be a
good business model if the base was much enlarged. Someone has to pay the
developers and maintainers. But how to get to that point?
One path is to produce a free easily obtainable Mathematica Reader on the
model of the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The reader could read the document,
operate the controls (with maybe some minor restrictions) but not much else.
The idea is that once users could publish in Mathematica they would write
more literate documents. More people would see them and decide they really
wanted to do the same (or use the generated knowledge) and so would buy
regular Mathematica themselves. I despair that WRI will ever make this
approach work. (A free Mathematica PlayerPro would be close but they don't
want to do that.) WRI puts too many restrictions and caveats in their
approaches such that it will never convince people that it will be a general
method of publication. For example, it looks as if all dynamics must be via
the Manipulate statement and one cannot write custom dynamics. I was once
hopeful, but now have doubts that this approach will ever work.
One can, of course, publish technical documents within the Mathematica
community. What is needed here is more good examples of literate documents.
Maybe once these are seen, they will seep by osmosis to the wider community
and win their way.
It is not at all a trivial exercise to use this new medium to best
advantage. There are many ways to go wrong, or to generate "computer junk"
or to include things because we just found out in Mathematica how to do
something and then include it without regard to its appropriateness or
without regard to other techniques. It is difficult at first to even have a
grasp of the techniques that are conducive to clear communication. We need
the same kind of thought given to active and dynamic documents as Edward
Tufte has given to data graphics.
For example, WRI has pushed the Demonstrations Project, even as a means of
publication, and it is quite popular. Nevertheless I can't believe that this
can ever be an acceptable general method of publishing ideas. It is far too
restrictive, being built around a single Manipulate statement and not even
allowing custom dynamics. A single object with a lot of knobs on it may be
very impressive but it is not the same thing as clear communication.
Communicating ideas and concepts will usually require development, multiple
modes of presentation, extended textual discussion. In other words,
something that looks more like a classic technical paper but with active
interaction, dynamics and usable generated knowledge.
David Park
djm...@comcast.net
http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/
From: AES [mailto:sie...@stanford.edu]
In article <iuukk8$epi$1...@smc.vnet.net>,
"McHale, Paul" <Paul....@excelitas.com> wrote:
> Looking at Mathematica's admitted origins as an authoring tool for Stephen
> Wolfram to publish his books, it's stronger points become evident. It
works
> very well in the individual experiment, document and "publish" mode.
Publish
> here meaning the document is indistinguishable from a PDF with static
data,
> no interaction. A book. I will likely stay in the standard flow of
> experiment, document and publish. As we can see from the exchanges of
> emails, this path is sufficiently difficult to do well. Stephen just
makes
> it look easy :)
With regard to this specific situation of going from notebook to "static
Richard Fateman
> In article<iuukk8$epi$1...@smc.vnet.net>,
> "McHale, Paul"<Paul....@excelitas.com> wrote:
>
>> Interactive documents seem to be a limited by corporate security more than
>> technology. I.e. If Mathematica were open source/free, this would be closer
>> to a non-issue. This is not practical.
>
> This the second and equally difficult problem with Mathematica. No
> question whatsoever: Mathematica is a marvelous intellectual
> development.
>
> But if Mathematica had emerged from,
Its predecessor, SMP, emerged from work done at Caltech by several
people including SW, based in part on various prior technology.
For various reasons, which I suspect he may have indicated in print, SW
decided quite the opposite from your assertion that software is best
produced in an academic environment.
and was continually further
> developed in, an open, academic, competitive environment, with
> publications, technical meetings, peer review, student involvement, and
> all the other advantages that this environment can provide, rather than
> a closed, quite secretive, and commercially driven enterprise, it would
> be even richer than it is today.
Past experience for the example of a computer algebra system, which is a
rather more esoteric beast than (say) a text editor or formatter, or
even an operating system, does not necessarily abide by your guidelines.
Support (e.g. in the US) by the National Science Foundation or perhaps
some part of the defense establishment, has been key in academic
research, but it tends to be inadequate in amount and/or duration for
the funding of an essentially interminable project. Support by
contributions of users is iffy, to say the least. See how many moribund
projects there are on sourceforge etc.
>
> Ask yourselves where many of the most important software tools of today
> emerged from?
Some of the most widely used pieces of software are, of course,
commercially supported. Some are free but not open source. Think of
Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Google, Adobe, even (gack) Facebook.
Do you think those apps for your telephone would be written if the
programmers thought they would not make any money (by sales,
advertisements, whatever?) Do you think that the 200 people (or however
many WRI now claims) could be supported by an academic enterprise?
(Actually, my guess is that 80% of them work in marketing, sales,
packaging -- non-technical; so maybe we would need to support fewer
people in a non-commercial setting. Unlikely unless computer algebra
became as important as building fusion machines or nuclear weapons.. or
Bill Gates decides to cure math in addition to polio.)
(and whether they are free and open tools, or closed and
> excessively expensive tools?) Just to cite two of these:
>
> * Unix: The essentially open world of the original Bell Labs.
The original Bell Labs Unix was not free, but sold commercially. It was
available to educational institutions free. The distribution of Berkeley
Unix for the DEC/VAX computer required a paid-up commercial license
(paid to Bell Labs, not Berkeley) for non-academic installations.
This changed, eventually. Commercial support of free unix is plausible
because of factors that are probably NOT in play for computer algebra
systems.
But there are gobs of free and open operating system projects that just
disappeared from the scene. My guess is that a pretty good recipe for
working hard for a few years and having no impact on the world is to
write an open-source operating system.
>
> * TeX and LaTeX: Donald Knuth and his academic students and disciples.
I think that adoption by the AMS was a key.
>
> And then all the immense swarm of freeware, shareware, and low-cost
> software tools that we all enjoy today.
You have a somewhat romanticized view of this swarm. 300,000 iphone
apps? How many free computer algebra systems that (apparently) you
don't use? Free and low-cost malware?
>
While I agree that Mathematica could be improved, I think it is pretty
speculative to say that it would be better if Mathematica were free and
open source. I'm in favor of paying programmers and mathematicians. I
doubt that you get the best results from students who have to deliver
pizzas in the evenings to pay their rent.
RJF
McHale, Paul
>developed in, an open, academic, competitive environment, with
>publications, technical meetings, peer review, student involvement, and
>all the other advantages that this environment can provide, rather than
>a closed, quite secretive, and commercially driven enterprise, it would
>be even richer than it is today.
I believe there are other market segmented pricing structures that could increase proliferation of Mathematica. I also think WRI needs an app store to encourage developers. This would have to include a Mathematica based package management system.
Sal Mangano tweeted he would love to write more Mathematic books but knew the market was too small to make it worthwhile. Growing the market will bring developers and drive the cost down. Apple clearly leads the way with this model.
>Ask yourselves where many of the most important software tools of today
>emerged from? (and whether they are free and open tools, or closed and
>excessively expensive tools?) Just to cite two of these:
>* Unix: The essentially open world of the original Bell Labs.
>* TeX and LaTeX: Donald Knuth and his academic students and disciples.
Comparing WRI to open source is very difficult. Apple is the only company on earth to mainstream Unix. Linux is to apple what ham radio is to cell phones. Steve Jobs proved if you want to harness development and provide a cohesive mature product, it takes a strong unifying leader to provide direction.
Look at all the flavors of Linux. Even the package manager is inconsistent. Develop for one distro and doesn't work on another without at least repackaging. In the best case, Mathematica would appear cobbled together by people who haven't met (like another Ma* symbolic package). In the worse case, it would become a fragmented effort that was impossible to usefully peer review. I can't afford to use a product with a similar trajectory and fragmentation of Linux. I use open source (subversion, Mantis). I like it when it works. When it doesn't, it gets pretty cold.
As far as LaTex, it might be a nice free academic tool. It is not used in any of the commercial or defense companies I have worked at. Regardless of fantastic numbers these examples allege, they have yet to enjoy the corporate desktop space. Steve Wolfram isn't going to attract key developers to reliably contribute without using $$$. I'm pretty sure corporate penetration is critical.
As far as peer review... I'm sure WRI could provide free copies to open initiative regression testing groups that would follow the standard software development model of black box regression testing. The software community has shown peer review of low level code is only useful in conjunction with ed output regression testing. (many a slip between the cup and the lip)
Just my opinions,
Paul
Daniel Lichtblau
> In article <ius5j1$2e...@smc.vnet.net>, dr DanW <dmaxwar...@gmail.com>
File > Save As > Files of type > LaTeX Document (*.tex)
will do much of this. It saves graphics as extended PostScript (.eps),
I think. One can certainly save them in other formats by hand,
process further with other tools, etc. As for translation of various
cell types to TeX, it can be a bit fiddly and require hand editing
afterwards, but generally one gets a reasonable starting point by
saving to TeX. This is of course a "Your mileage may vary" scenario.
What I can say with certainty is it has worked tolerably well for my
purposes.
Daniel Lichtblau
Wolfram Research
(not same Daniel as above in this thread)
McHale, Paul
Paul McHale | Electrical Engineer, Energetics Systems | Excelitas Technologies Corp.
Phone: +1 937.865.3004 | Fax: +1 937.865.5170 | Mobile: +1 937.371.2828
1100 Vanguard Blvd, Miamisburg, Ohio 45342-0312 USA
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Thank you
-----Original Message-----
From: AES [mailto:sie...@stanford.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 5:41 AM
Subject: Re: How to write a "proper" math document
In article <iuukk8$epi$1...@smc.vnet.net>,
"McHale, Paul" <Paul....@excelitas.com> wrote:
> Looking at Mathematica's admitted origins as an authoring tool for Stephen
> Wolfram to publish his books, it's stronger points become evident. It works
> very well in the individual experiment, document and "publish" mode. Publish
> here meaning the document is indistinguishable from a PDF with static data,
> no interaction. A book. I will likely stay in the standard flow of
> experiment, document and publish. As we can see from the exchanges of
> emails, this path is sufficiently difficult to do well. Stephen just makes
> it look easy :)
With regard to this specific situation of going from notebook to "static
book", let me quote from the 3rd edition of Heikki Ruskeepaa's masterful
Mathematica Navigator. Navigator is of course "a book" -- a superb book
-- written in Mathematica.
But in Section 3.4 of this book, entitled "Writing Mathematica
Documents" and following a subsection on "Mathematica as a Writing
Tool", Ruskeepaa has a subsection which reads as follows:
=================
McHale, Paul
From: Chris Degnen [mailto:deg...@cwgsy.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 5:41 AM
Subject: Re: How to write a "proper" math document
>I plan to automate output to Word to create editable documents.
>
>As an example of what can be done in .Net from Mathematica, the
>ExcelPieChart.nb demo is very interesting...
>
>See "Calling COM Objects" on this page, (first section):
>
>http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/NETLink/tutorial/CallingNETFromMathematica.html
>
>I have obtained the textbook Writing Word Macros, which gives
>VBA examples for manipulating the Word object model, but if there
>is any reference material or examples of the Mathematica syntax
>for manipulating Word I would be interested to know of it. Thanks
Be advised we had a legacy system based on VB macros. Every time Windows updates or office updates, the macros break. There must be a way around this. We have yet to find it.
Paul
AES
"David Park" <djm...@comcast.net> wrote:
> The "two document" approach has both feet planted in the past. The first
> "document" is really a "programmable super graphical calculator" planted in
> the recent past. The second document is a static "text, equations, diagram"
> document planted in 3000 year old technology.
>
> . . . the second of the current "two documents" nearly completely throws
> away all of the benefits of an active and dynamic mathematical medium. Such
> as: . . .
>
> AES, I sometimes wonder if you have ever tried to write such a document or
> ever read one. You seem to be unaware of the advantages.
I'll refer you once again to an article I wrote two decades ago (when
the Mac was just 5 years old, and Mathematica had just appeared):
<http://spie.org/etop/1991/338_1.pdf>
It's opening sentence reads:
"As I began preparing the talk on which this article is based its
subject matter began to evolve, moving from the original topic
of computer display tools for optics education toward the more
general topic of personal computers in higher education,
especially in science and engineering; and so this article will
be directed more broadly to that topic."
I've also voiced on this forum my very high opinion of Manipulate and
its dynamic capabilities as providing a major and highly valuable
contribution to these broad objectives.
But I believe there are still multiple methods and needs for the
creation and the distribution of information and knowledge, including
dynamic mathematical tools that individuals can use by themselves to
explore all kinds of knowledge; dynamic tools for group presentations
(seminars, lectures, dynamic web sites]; and, still very important and
necessary, printed books, journal articles, manuals, and other
manuscripts for individual use.
If I'm trying to understand and puzzle out the physical implications of
some involved mathematical analysis of a physical problem, I very much
want to have the equations and their derivation, along with other
reference material, in a printed article or memo or book on the desktop
beside me -- maybe several such items -- so I can flip through this
material, or scrawl notes on it, or just stare at the derivations to see
if some insight will leap out at me, AND at the same time have a dynamic
mathematical tool available and running on the large monitor in front of
me.
Similarly, if I'm trying to program something using a new tool, I need
to have one or more systematically organized manuals or collections of
reference material on the desktop beside me, AND at the same time have
that tool itself running on the large monitor in front of me.
Trying to carry out all the activities involved in either of these two
situations using only a monitor and no printed materials, so that one is
continuously jumping back and forth and navigating between the active
computation and the reference materials, all on a single screen (even a
large one) is an exercise in frustration and inefficiency.
And, trying to insist that all of this be done not only on a single
screen but within a single tool or a single program, like Mathematica,
with all the documentation for that tool available only on that same
screen, is also an absolutely prime way to suppress the creativity of
all the innumerable other people in the world who might write other
better tools, or might write better documentation for some aspect of
Mathematica.
So: We basically agree on some things -- but, I guess, substantially
disagree on others.
You further add:
> The solution is simple. Every technically literate person should have
> Mathematica. A price of $295 (for the Home edition) is not unreasonable for
> people who might at first be casual users or readers.
I absolutely agree with your second sentence -- except I'd broaden it to
say something like "Every intellectually active individual . . .", at
almost any age from intermediate school level to senility, and in almost
any field, 'technical' or not.
The problem is, this is absolutely incompatible with your third
sentence. For the average family in this world a stripped down "Family
Edition" in the $40 range (fully usable by mom, dad, and all the kids)
would be more like it; $295 is at the upper level of what I'll willingly
pay for a more or less full-bore edition of Mathematica to use in my own
post-retirement technical consulting and scholarly explorations (and
that's for something with at least a 4 or 5-year lifetime before I have
to pay for any upgrades).
Mathematica needs more competition from other open-source or
lower-priced or freeware tools that can do some of the things it does
equally well. It also needs some form of modular restructuring, so that
different grades and levels of users can be served with different levels
or subsets of the capabilities built into the complete system (I
appreciate this may not be easy; but that doesn't make it any less
needed).
AES
Richard Fateman <fat...@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> > And then all the immense swarm of freeware, shareware, and low-cost
> > software tools that we all enjoy today.
>
> You have a somewhat romanticized view of this swarm. 300,000 iphone
> apps? How many free computer algebra systems that (apparently) you
> don't use? Free and low-cost malware?
> >
> While I agree that Mathematica could be improved, I think it is pretty
> speculative to say that it would be better if Mathematica were free and
> open source. I'm in favor of paying programmers and mathematicians. I
> doubt that you get the best results from students who have to deliver
> pizzas in the evenings to pay their rent.
As just a brief response to this and some of what preceded it:
I'm thinking of more or less serious, general purpose, and reasonably
low-cost or free software and computational tools, suitable for
intellectual, scholarly, or artistic pursuits, not iphone tools (which
I'm not knocking, just not interested in).
My Mac is full of them -- things like BBEdit, Bean, Bento, Bookdog,
DoubleTake, DragThing, EasyFind, EndNote, Excalibur, Fetch, File Juicer,
GraphicConverter, Google Earth, and so on down through the rest of the
alphabet (e.g., Patent Download, PDF Shrink, Print Window, Pronto
Patent). BASIC (a university development, if I recall) would once have
headed that list.
I'm particularly thinking of software tools which would provide some
limited but still useful combination of computer algebra, numerical
computation, and graphics -- "Mathematica Light", so to speak.
As for paying programmers and mathematicians, that's one of the things
that universities have always done and to some extent continue to do,
along with national labs, national academies in some countries,
'Stiftungs' like Max Planck, and so on -- not as much as we'd like, of
course, or as much as we (the US) should do -- and Bell Labs, Xerox
PARC, and others once upon a time.
Richard Fateman
> AES,
>
> The "two document" approach has both feet planted in the past. The first
> "document" is really a "programmable super graphical calculator" planted in
> the recent past. The second document is a static "text, equations, diagram"
> document planted in 3000 year old technology.
>
> It is as if, after the introduction of paper or papyrus media, the mode of
> communication was to write drafts on paper but only publish by chiseling in
> stone - ignoring the fact that it is much easier to copy and distribute
> paper documents.
I think you quite miss the point of static documents, at least the best
of them. Ruskeepaa may be right. At the risk of repeating ...
Documents provide an opportunity for an author and a reader to traverse
a territory in a fundamentally linear fashion, together, in order to
transmit an understanding from the author to the reader.
A "document" with (optional) links might be written with the
irritating sloppiness of some on-line presentations. ( sloppy... I can
use any new terms I wish because the reader can click on them for
definitions, so why bother trying to present stuff in a linear fashion,
and anyway someone might find the 5th page of my "paper" via a search
engine and not read the introduction so why not just plop everything
where it occurs to me...)
>
> Similarly the second of the current "two documents" nearly completely throws
> away all of the benefits of an active and dynamic mathematical medium. Such
> as:
> 1) Generated knowledge in the form of active tools for using the ideas in
> the document.
> 2) If everything is calculated, then the document has a high level of
> self-proofing and high integrity. (Perhaps not perfect, but far better that
> documents produced by word processing.) It will be more convincing to the
> reader.
> 3) A reader can quickly verify the calculated results, try variations, or
> use the material to extend the results.
> 4) An active and dynamic medium opens up many new ways to present and
> envision concepts and information that are just plain missing in static
> media.
In contrast with Ruskeepaa, I think you are confusing a showcase and a
workshop. If you visit a "science museum" you will see demonstrations
of "science stuff" often oriented towards children, but occasionally
neat even for scientifically literate adults. These demos are presumably
carefully crafted to emphasize some point or other; the interaction
represents a blend of science and showmanship. I have not explored much
of the Mathematica Demos project, but I gather it has that flavor.
A workshop or laboratory, on the other hand, is filled with the detritus
of failed experiments, the nasty, dirty details of finding the one rock
which is a geode and not just a solid rock, etc.
In Mathematica, the ugly details of setting up a plot or animation, or
sequencing the definition of a bunch of rules and adding conditions here
and there, and "waving the dead chicken" of putting N[...] in the right
place, and ReleaseHold or Hold or ... so it finally comes out right..
this is not science, nor math, nor illuminating. This is grunge, and it
is the grunge of (arguably) poor idiosyncratic design.
I find it far preferable to take stuff out of a computer algebra system
as TeX and paste it into a static document. This also provides an
opportunity to fix the broken displays. E.g. we really don't expect a
display of f=ma to come out f=am. Or E=mc^2 to come out e=c^2m
(note also that E=2.718... not energy). Mathematica thinks it knows
better than Einstein and Newton.
>
> AES, I sometimes wonder if you have ever tried to write such a document or
> ever read one. You seem to be unaware of the advantages.
I think that there is some obligation to provide backup support for
published results that came from a computer, especially a computer
algebra system, though this is rarely the case in journal publications.
An appendix or an on-line supplement, or a computational substrate
somehow linked as an incidental coordinated computation to a section in
a paper is something that I would welcome, in general. Not as a
substitute for literate logical mathematical explanation. I would
certainly NOT find a workshop or laboratory table or a "notebook"
cluttered with the impedimenta of Mathematica to be a good first or
unique presentation. Especially if notions like "equal" or "accuracy"
are hijacked by Mathematica and do not correspond to ordinary logic or
mathematics.
Previously I have made the distinction between a "showcase" and a
"notebook". You don't want to see my notebook, unless you are perhaps a
patent lawyer. I don't want to study yours. Indeed, when I write code
for a computer algebra system, I often do it in a text editor and then
"batch process" it. I fiddle a bit, and then fix the file and "batch
process" it again, as necessary.
I try to make it as clear as possible so I can continue to work on it
sometime later. However, it has lots of stuff of no interest to
bystanders for whom my "results" are some subset of my fiddling. to
show others I need to construct a "showcase".
Does Mathematica provide facilities to build showcases? Sure. However,
the usual scientific concept of "notebook" is a different animal from a
Mathematica notebook. A real notebook typically has numbered bound
pages. You write down (and date) everything you can. You don't go back
and erase, or tear out pages. You save your notebooks forever.
>
> The solution is simple. Every technically literate person should have
> Mathematica.
I suppose that if you think people should learn to program a computer
and the only programming language you are aware of is Mathematica, then
you might conclude that people should learn Mathematica. There are
strong incentives to favor some alternative languages, e.g. you need not
buy them, and you might get a job.
A price of $295 (for the Home edition) is not unreasonable for
> people who might at first be casual users or readers. It would probably be a
> good business model if the base was much enlarged. Someone has to pay the
> developers and maintainers. But how to get to that point?
Maybe Mathematica should have ads. E.g. we interrupt this Integrate[]
to inform you of the excellent record of success of this Cure for
Acne.... Perhaps Wolfram Alpha does. I thought about it as a way of
supporting TILU.
>
> One path is to produce a free easily obtainable Mathematica Reader on the
> model of the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The reader could read the document,
> operate the controls (with maybe some minor restrictions) but not much else.
There is one, I thought. e.g. in 1994
http://archives.math.utk.edu/software/msdos/utilities/mathreader/mathread.abstract
I believe its style (free open source) was forced on Wolfram by the
author of the (version 1, 2,) front-end of Mathematica, back then, as a
concession. Otherwise he wouldn't write the proprietary one. There is a
sad history there.
At least you asked for it in 2003 --
http://www.mathkb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/mathematica/396/How-does-MathReader-work
but it seems that it has disappeared in favor of MathPlayer.
> The idea is that once users could publish in Mathematica they would write
> more literate documents.
I can't see why someone who cannot write ordinary natural language in a
journal article would be enabled to do better in a notebook. While
there is a certain precision one has available from using a formal
language, I doubt that most readers would prefer to read a program to
natural language. Experience reading student programs suggests that the
dominant thoughts of a reader are probably "what is going on here?" and
"why did she do that?" and "is that deliberate?" and "huh, a call to a
program I don't see defined here.."
More people would see them and decide they really
> wanted to do the same (or use the generated knowledge) and so would buy
> regular Mathematica themselves. I despair that WRI will ever make this
> approach work. (A free Mathematica PlayerPro would be close but they don't
> want to do that.) WRI puts too many restrictions and caveats in their
> approaches such that it will never convince people that it will be a general
> method of publication.
You seem unforgiving of Wolfram, who, after all, is only trying to make
money. You seem to impute some alternative higher calling to him, like
making the world a better place.
> For example, it looks as if all dynamics must be via
> the Manipulate statement and one cannot write custom dynamics. I was once
> hopeful, but now have doubts that this approach will ever work.
>
> One can, of course, publish technical documents within the Mathematica
> community. What is needed here is more good examples of literate documents.
> Maybe once these are seen, they will seep by osmosis to the wider community
> and win their way.
The "Mathematica Journal" has been around for a while. I don't think it
has been especially accepted. Or the works by Michael Trott. or the math
functions web site.
>
> It is not at all a trivial exercise to use this new medium to best
> advantage. There are many ways to go wrong, or to generate "computer junk"
> or to include things because we just found out in Mathematica how to do
> something and then include it without regard to its appropriateness or
> without regard to other techniques. It is difficult at first to even have a
> grasp of the techniques that are conducive to clear communication. We need
> the same kind of thought given to active and dynamic documents as Edward
> Tufte has given to data graphics.
Yes, I agree entirely here. I think that Tufte is hard to match.
>
> For example, WRI has pushed the Demonstrations Project, even as a means of
> publication, and it is quite popular. Nevertheless I can't believe that this
> can ever be an acceptable general method of publishing ideas. It is far too
> restrictive, being built around a single Manipulate statement and not even
> allowing custom dynamics. A single object with a lot of knobs on it may be
> very impressive but it is not the same thing as clear communication.
> Communicating ideas and concepts will usually require development, multiple
> modes of presentation, extended textual discussion. In other words,
> something that looks more like a classic technical paper but with active
> interaction, dynamics and usable generated knowledge.
There was some effort (by me, and others) made to have NIST and its
digital library of mathematical functions provide (free) software to
augment its information. I think that the editors felt they were being
extremely ambitious in making the authors use TeX, for them a novel
idea, but of course 20-30 years old. To introduce computer algebra
programs too -- that would be impossible. Maybe in another 30 years
NIST will take another step.
RJF
AES
"McHale, Paul" <Paul....@excelitas.com> wrote:
> Thanks! Very powerful comments. I will have to think considerably about
> this. I wonder if this is what Stephen Wolfram did? Anyone have insight?
> No doubt Heikki Ruskeepaa's work should almost ship with Mathematica. I
> consider it one of a few essential books for Mathematica.
Well, as a confirmation of my own "reference material on physical
desktop, active computations on monitor screen" approach (or maybe just
my own compulsive character), I have literally razor-bladed my copy of
Navigator in 30 separate chapters, each held by a mini binder clip, all
of them standing upright in a box on my self. (Thank god he followed
the long-standing publishing practice of starting each chapter on a
right-hand page.)
When I need to get into some new Mathematica topic (stylesheet editing,
manipulations, difference equations, whatever), the relevant chapter
comes over on the desktop to get consulted, highlighted and marked up.
I wish he'd sell the book as a boxed set something like this -- or at
least a spiral-bound folio-sized lie-flat version.
John Fultz
I wanted to respond to one particular point you made in your recent post:
On Thu, 7 Jul 2011 07:28:02 -0400 (EDT), David Park wrote:
> One path is to produce a free easily obtainable Mathematica Reader on the
> model of the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The reader could read the document,
> operate the controls (with maybe some minor restrictions) but not much
> else. The idea is that once users could publish in Mathematica they would
> write more literate documents. More people would see them and decide they
> really wanted to do the same (or use the generated knowledge) and so
> would buy regular Mathematica themselves. I despair that WRI will ever
> make this approach work. (A free Mathematica PlayerPro would be close but
> they don't want to do that.) WRI puts too many restrictions and caveats
> in their approaches such that it will never convince people that it will
> be a general method of publication. For example, it looks as if all
> dynamics must be via the Manipulate statement and one cannot write custom
> dynamics. I was once hopeful, but now have doubts that this approach will
> ever work.
You've made this criticism before, and the criticism was much more valid then
than now. It's not clear to me from what you wrote above whether you know or
appreciate how much things have changed. One of your previous criticisms has
long been that Mathematica could not simply create and maintain a native
document which would be readable and executable by Player. I.e., because Player
could "play" .nb files, and Mathematica could not create .nbp files (without
submission to a website, and all that this entails). My understanding is that
this a large part of why you believed Player Pro to be the superior
solution...because Player Pro can play .nb files.
But, in version 8, the situation has changed significantly. Mathematica can now
directly create and maintain CDF (or sometimes called "FreeCDF") files. Player
can play CDF files. CDF, as they might say, is the new NBP. There remain, of
course, some restrictions as to what can be accomplished in the Player. The
broadest category of items is that CDF files created directly by Mathematica
cannot store new content to disk. They can't use Export[], save files, etc. (*)
But they do support much of what you've suggested before, and much more than
Mathematica 7 did.
That you may not be aware of this isn't your fault. Wolfram hasn't said much
about it yet because we've been in the process of making sure that we can launch
the right message about CDF in a strong way. There will be a lot more to be
said about CDF soon...I expect that before long plenty will be said on the
Wolfram website and elsewhere describing it in much more detail. But the
functionality is already there, in version 8, and I encourage you to play with
it.
Sincerely,
John Fultz
jfu...@wolfram.com
User Interface Group
Wolfram Research, Inc.
(*) It is possible, incidentally, to create CDF files with the capacity to,
while running in Player, create content using Export[], saving, etc. But that
functionality can't be unlocked directly from within Mathematica, and more will
be said about that later, as well.
Armand Tamzarian
> Thanks! Very powerful comments. I will have to think considerably about this. I wonder if this is what Stephen Wolfram did? Anyone have insight? No doubt Heikki Ruskeepaa's work should almost ship with Mathematica. I consider it one of a few essential books for Mathematica.
>
> Paul McHale | Electrical Engineer, Energetics Systems | Excelitas Technologies Corp.
>
> Phone: +1 937.865.3004 | Fax: +1 937.865.5170 | Mobile: +1 937.371.2828
> 1100 Vanguard Blvd, Miamisburg, Ohio 45342-0312 USA
>
> Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
> This email message and any attachments are confidential and proprietary to Excelitas Technologies Corp. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please inform the sender by replying to this email or sending a message to the sender and destroy the message and any attachments.
> Thank you
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AES [mailto:sieg...@stanford.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 5:41 AM
> Subject: Re: How to write a "proper" math document
>
e
> main document so that you can easily find the computations of a certain
> section. Add into the working document comments about the computations,
> such as any difficulties that may arise; they may be valuable if you
> need to do similar computations at a later time.
>
Having typeset a book in Mathematica I don't believe it is necessary
at all to run two documents -- in fact I cannot imagine trying to run
a book project like that.
If you have a grasp of stylesheeting and front end commands (as per
what David Reiss alludes to above) then IMO a single document is the
way to go.
My 2c
Mike
Peltio
> While I agree that Mathematica could be improved, I think it is pretty
> speculative to say that it would be better if Mathematica were free and
> open source. I'm in favor of paying programmers and mathematicians. I
> doubt that you get the best results from students who have to deliver
> pizzas in the evenings to pay their rent.
I can see your point here, but I believe the biggest advantage of free
software (as in free speech) is that everyone who _needs_ an
improvement _for him/herself_ is free, if he or she is able, to develop
and add the code that make an application better or more useful.
It does not take anything away from you: if you are able and willing to
perfectionate the code to suit your own purpose, you are free to do it.
If you have the money to pay someone who can do that for you, you can
let them do it (in this way they could quit that pizza delivering job).
With closed source software you are only free to beg the source owner
to do that for you, possibly for a fee (or the cost of an upgrade). And
if he/she does not feel like doing it, you're stuck. I guess there are
a 'long liver' bugs in Mathematica, too.
Perhaps complex software must reach a critical mass before going open
and free. In this way the original developer can be rewarded for their
skills and dedication during the commercial phase. From the 'now it's
free' point on, the software can benefit from the contributes of the
skilled users. I guess that's what happens when patents expire.
Cheers,
Peltio
AES
Richard Fateman <fat...@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> I find it far preferable to take stuff out of a computer algebra system
> as TeX and paste it into a static document. This also provides an
> opportunity to fix the broken displays. E.g. we really don't expect a
> display of f=ma to come out f=am. Or E=mc^2 to come out e=c^2m
> (note also that E=2.718... not energy). Mathematica thinks it knows
> better than Einstein and Newton.
This is an absolutely valid and substantial observation in my opinion as
well.
The structuring of mathematical expressions -- that is, the choice of
symbols or notation, and the organizing and grouping and ordering of
terms within an expression -- is a vitally important feature in reading,
grasping, recognizing, understanding, and internalizing what they are
saying, and what are their connections to other expressions and
concepts.
There is no set of rules for doing this -- only a large body of
informally accepted conventions that have evolved over time, but that
are very widely used. (Anyone who wrote a treatise on e-m theory and
used E for the magnetic field and H for the E field would be a fool;
even writing the Poynting vector as H cross E with the normal meanings
of those symbols would be unnecessarily stupid.)
I appreciate why Mathematica does -- even has to do -- what it does in
structuring mathematical expressions in its internal operations. But
it's very hard work to convert between that and readable mathematical
expressions.
Richard Fateman
> Richard Fateman wrote
>
>> While I agree that Mathematica could be improved, I think it is pretty
>> speculative to say that it would be better if Mathematica were free and
>> open source. I'm in favor of paying programmers and mathematicians. I
>> doubt that you get the best results from students who have to deliver
>> pizzas in the evenings to pay their rent.
>
> I can see your point here, but I believe the biggest advantage of free
> software (as in free speech) is that everyone who _needs_ an
> improvement _for him/herself_ is free, if he or she is able, to develop
> and add the code that make an application better or more useful.
With a Gnu license, that person is compelled, if distribution is
contemplated, to give that improved code away. And continue delivering
pizza. A disincentive.
As you say, making a deal with the owner is an alternative which may or
may not work. It's essentially socialism vs. capitalism.
There is also nothing special about software here. Why not lobby in
favor of all intellectual "property" being made free, including music,
books, newspapers, drug patents, etc.
But this is off topic for this newsgroup.
RJF
AES
> We need
> > the same kind of thought given to active and dynamic documents as Edward
> > Tufte has given to data graphics.
>
> Yes, I agree entirely here. I think that Tufte is hard to match.
Have to say that, back sometime around the early 1990s, which I was
voluntarily teaching a small course for EE students in preparing demos
and graphic displays on the Mac using QuickBasic (or was it Real Basic?)
I bought Tufte to see what it might have to tell me the graphic of data
and computed results -- and decided it had nothing really useful to say,
was as over-hyped as it was empty of meaningful content, and discarded
it.
Maybe I should look again . . .
AES
wrote:
> That you may not be aware of this isn't your fault. Wolfram hasn't said much
> about it yet because we've been in the process of making sure that we can
> launch
> the right message about CDF in a strong way. There will be a lot more to be
> said about CDF soon...I expect that before long plenty will be said on the
> Wolfram website and elsewhere describing it in much more detail. But the
> functionality is already there, in version 8, and I encourage you to play
> with
> it.
Thank you for this detailed post.
But, will CDF become a genuinely open, published, internationally
standardized, and long-term time-stable format, in the general fashion
of JPEG, TIFF, PDF, EPS, ASCII, RTF, TeX syntax, and so on?
Mathematica has alway been fairly helpful in both generating and dealing
with (exporting and importing) a wide variety of formats. But will it
be possible for a "thousand flowers to bloom" in the form of non-Wolfram
software tools to also read, write, create, edit, and display CDF files?
If not, we'll still be in the same trap of proprietary formats that
Microsoft used to confine so many people for so long -- and that Apple
is now obviously moving toward in its iOS ecosystem.
Murray Eisenberg
have to do so by means of Manipulate. But there are situations where
Manipulate is much too restrictive and you want other Dynamic content,
including DynamicModule.
Also, to promote the .cdf format and CDF Player and plug-in, surely a
more attention-getting name than "CDF" or "Computable Document Format"
is desirable? Yes, "CDF" has a nice analogy to "PDF", but so what. (And
just wait for Adobe to catch on and sue over the use of "DF"!)
> That you may not be aware of this isn't your fault. Wolfram hasn't said much
> about it yet because we've been in the process of making sure that we can launch
> the right message about CDF in a strong way. There will be a lot more to be
> said about CDF soon...I expect that before long plenty will be said on the
> Wolfram website and elsewhere describing it in much more detail. But the
> functionality is already there, in version 8, and I encourage you to play with
> it.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> John Fultz
> jfu...@wolfram.com
> User Interface Group
> Wolfram Research, Inc.
>
>
> (*) It is possible, incidentally, to create CDF files with the capacity to,
> while running in Player, create content using Export[], saving, etc. But that
> functionality can't be unlocked directly from within Mathematica, and more will
> be said about that later, as well.
>
>
>
--
Murray Eisenberg mur...@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
AES
> Documents provide an opportunity for an author and a reader to traverse
> a territory in a fundamentally linear fashion, together, in order to
> transmit an understanding from the author to the reader.
And, there is no reason any printed document can not be made available
in online PDF form as well . . . in which case this document has the
additional, different, and vastly important advantage of being
instantaneously electronically searchable, in minute detail.
PDF searching then gives every reader in essence an instantaneous,
totally customizable, blazing fast index to the document. You can
instantaneously look for any minutiae, or any occurrences of any term,
buried anywhere in the entire document, whether the author thought it
important enough to include in the TOC or the author's index, or not.
[You can, in fact, search multiple PDF documents in one, with all the
hits reported to you in one search window, with each hit a live
clickable link to the exact point in that document.
Mathematica's primary documentation is, of course, totally lacking in
this capability.
Ruskeepaa's book is in fact lacking in it also, since the accompanying
CD does not contain the complete book in any one file and in PDF format,
only in 30-odd individual chapters in HTML form
AES
Murray Eisenberg <mur...@math.umass.edu> wrote:
> David pointed out that if you want interactive content in a .cdf, you
> have to do so by means of Manipulate. But there are situations where
> Manipulate is much too restrictive and you want other Dynamic content,
> including DynamicModule.
>
> Also, to promote the .cdf format and CDF Player and plug-in, surely a
> more attention-getting name than "CDF" or "Computable Document Format"
> is desirable? Yes, "CDF" has a nice analogy to "PDF", but so what. (And
> just wait for Adobe to catch on and sue over the use of "DF"!)
DDF ?
Richard Fateman
> David pointed out that if you want interactive content in a .cdf, you
> have to do so by means of Manipulate. But there are situations where
> Manipulate is much too restrictive and you want other Dynamic content,
> including DynamicModule.
>
> Also, to promote the .cdf format and CDF Player and plug-in, surely a
> more attention-getting name than "CDF" or "Computable Document Format"
> is desirable? Yes, "CDF" has a nice analogy to "PDF", but so what. (And
> just wait for Adobe to catch on and sue over the use of "DF"!)
I think that there is very little likelihood of the world standardizing
on CDF for digital distribution of mathematical documents. There IS a
standard, and it is different. The www has evolved document
representation to include math, and MathML is how. Numerous programs,
including Mathematica, can use MathML. Is this a good standard? Eh,
probably not the simplest way of representing a Mathematica notebook.
However, one can, via "save-as", save a Mathematica notebook as XML+MathML.
There is another standard, "OpenMath" which is more ambitious.
I have been critical of both of these, in part because they are
incredibly verbose. But no one has to look at the internals.
One possibility is that by means of a click a browser displaying MathML
might stuff the MathML into a computer algebra system. This is
the kind of thing I was hoping the NIST would consider in its digital
library. I see no reason that Mathematica cannot be linked to MathML
in a web document, if the browser is running in a Mathematica-ready
computer system.
If it is not already programmed as the inverse of "save-as" XML, I
imagine it would take only a few lines of code (probably in jscript) to
suck up (suitable) XML documents into Mathematica. Actually, I
glanced at the output XML, from Mathematica and it is not really
suitable as Mathematica input, (in version 7 anyway).
But it could be made to work, in my opinion.
It might even make documents that could be read on telephones.
RJF
John Fultz
content initiative (which he didn't name, but was in fact .nbp, processed
through the "Publish for Player" mechanism on the web), only Manipulates were
supported. That was our stated policy for .nbp, although, in fact, it always
worked with a large class of Dynamics generally.
That is no longer true for .cdf files. CDF supports Dynamic and DynamicModule
as well as Manipulates (although you'll find the marketing materials still
emphasize the use of Manipulate...and for good reason since it is so easy to
generate interfaces using it).
Sincerely,
John Fultz
jfu...@wolfram.com
User Interface Group
Wolfram Research, Inc.
On Sat, 9 Jul 2011 07:35:11 -0400 (EDT), Murray Eisenberg wrote:
> David pointed out that if you want interactive content in a .cdf, you
> have to do so by means of Manipulate. But there are situations where
> Manipulate is much too restrictive and you want other Dynamic content,
> including DynamicModule.
>
> Also, to promote the .cdf format and CDF Player and plug-in, surely a
> more attention-getting name than "CDF" or "Computable Document Format"
> is desirable? Yes, "CDF" has a nice analogy to "PDF", but so what. (And
> just wait for Adobe to catch on and sue over the use of "DF"!)
>
Murray Eisenberg
directly writing or reading mathematical expressions. (La)TeX, by
contrast, is infinitely more writable and readable. Even more readable
(and writable) than Content MathML.
Moreover, not all browsers natively render MathML, e.g., Safari on a Mac.
On 7/10/11 5:02 AM, Richard Fateman wrote:
>
> ...I think that there is very little likelihood of the world standardizing
> on CDF for digital distribution of mathematical documents. There IS a
> standard, and it is different. The www has evolved document
> representation to include math, and MathML is how. Numerous programs,
> including Mathematica, can use MathML. Is this a good standard? Eh,
> probably not the simplest way of representing a Mathematica notebook.
>
> However, one can, via "save-as", save a Mathematica notebook as XML+MathML.
>
> There is another standard, "OpenMath" which is more ambitious.
>
> I have been critical of both of these, in part because they are
> incredibly verbose....
Alexei Boulbitch
This is a very nice presentation, and a very tempting technique.
However, it is a presentation, rather than the article, and without
your explanations it is difficult to catch many things in it. Have you
may be a sort of an article or tutorial on this subject? That would be
very helpful.
Best, Alexei
For strategies and techniques for doing things like this using
tagging, take a look at
http://scientificarts.com/worklife/conference2008.html
Best,
David
On Jul 4, 6:44 am, dr DanW <dmaxwar... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pulling back from the meta-issue of literate engineering, this is the sec=
ond time in as many months the topic of hiding cells for publishing documen=
tation has come up in this forum.=A0 I think I will experiment a little wit=
h using cell tags to mark cells for hiding (closing) so switching between t=
he development and publishing layout is just a button click.=A0 If I come u=
p with something I am happy with, I'll post it under a new thread.
>
> Daniel
Alexei BOULBITCH, Dr., habil.
IEE S.A.
ZAE Weiergewan,
11, rue Edmond Reuter,
L-5326 Contern, LUXEMBOURG
Office phone=A0:=A0 +352-2454-2566
Office fax:=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0 +352-2454-3566
mobile phone:=A0 +49 151 52 40 66 44
e-mail: alexei.b...@iee.lu
Andrzej Kozlowski
> I find it far preferable to take stuff out of a computer algebra system
> as TeX and paste it into a static document. This also provides an
> opportunity to fix the broken displays. E.g. we really don't expect a
> display of f=ma to come out f=am. Or E=mc^2 to come out e=c^2m
> (note also that E=2.718... not energy). Mathematica thinks it knows
> better than Einstein and Newton.
This argument is entirely bogus. If you really want to produce a "static
document" in Mathematica there is no need to evaluate anything. You
enter f=ma and it stays that way. You can also write E=mc^2 or
whatever you like and it will stay this way too. This is so obvious it
is hard to believe anyone could fail to have noticed it.
Of course things are different when evaluated output is concerned but it
also obvious that it is much easier to "fix it" in Mathematica than to
copy and paste into TeX and then fix it there.
There are good reasons for using TeX instead of Mathematica for journal
articles (I almost always do so myself) but very few of them were given
in this thread (and none in the above passage). One of the main reasons
is that in fact it is often very hard and sometimes perhaps impossible
to produce in Mathematica mathematical documents of the kind of
professional quality that is expected by mathematics journals.
On the other hand I use Mathematica exclusively for such things as
writing homework or exam problems for my students and almost all
"informal" mathematical writing. The advantages of Mathematica for all
such purposes seem to me so obvious that I won't bother listing them
here.
Andrzej Kozlowski
Murray Eisenberg
is a well-kept secret -- and contrary to the documentation!
In fact, the Mathematica 8.0.1 Documentation Center page
howto/CreateAComputableDocumentFormatFile
states:
"Almost all of the functions available in Mathematica can be used to
build applications for CDF Player, but there are a few programming
restrictions to keep in mind.
-- All interactive content must be generated with the Manipulate
command and may only use mouse-driven elements, such as Slider, Locator,
Checkbox, PopupMenu, etc."
Same thing is stated in the WRI web site version of that HowTo page.
--
John Fultz
Apple continues to position Safari as an advanced, HTML5 compliant browser, I
should think that they'll be looking into adding this to Safari. I have no
inside knowledge on the subject...it merely seems a reasonable conclusion.
Sincerely,
John Fultz
jfu...@wolfram.com
User Interface Group
Wolfram Research, Inc.
Richard Fateman
> Due to its verbosity alone, MathML is an utterly horrible language for
> directly writing or reading mathematical expressions.
This is entirely true and I think no one disagrees. So is HTML.
Neither MathML nor HTML is generally written directly, but is a target
language for editors and automatic generators of one sort or another.
I never directly write MathML, but then I rarely write Latex except for
very small pieces. I can generate Latex from a computer algebra system.
So the actual readability of MathML is not so important. The fact is
that it is a standard. The way I would use it (and at least one CAS
does this) is to generate the blecherous MathML code but have in it a
comment which says how a human would write it in the CAS syntax.
(La)TeX, by
> contrast, is infinitely more writable and readable. Even more readable
> (and writable) than Content MathML.
>
> Moreover, not all browsers natively render MathML, e.g., Safari on a Mac.
That is probably a good reason not to use Safari for math documents.
Until relatively recently (and maybe even now), MathML is rarely used.
PDF for math dominates. I haven't looked at recent surveys though.
RJF
David Reiss
Bestregards,
David
On Monday, July 11, 2011, Alexei Boulbitch <Alexei.B...@iee.lu> wrote:
> David, This is a very nice presentation, and a very tempting technique.
However, it is a presentation, rather than the article, and without your explanations it is difficult to catch many things in it. Have you may be a sort of an article or tutorial on this subject? That would be very helpful. Best, Alexei For strategies and techniques for doing things like this usingtagging, take a look at http://scientificarts.com/worklife/conference2008.html Best,David On Jul 4, 6:44 am, dr DanW <dmaxwar... at gmail.com> wrote:> Pulling back from the meta-issue of literate engineering, this is the second time in as many months the topic of hiding cells for publishing documentation has come up in this forum. I think I will experiment a little with using cell tags to mark cells for hiding (closing) so switching between the development and publishing layout is just a button click. If I come up with something I am happy with, I'll post it under a new thread.> > Daniel Alexei BOULBITCH, Dr., habil.IEE S.A.ZAE Weiergewan,11, rue Edmond Reuter,L-5326 Contern, LUXEMBOURG Office phone : +352-2454-2566Office fax: +352-2454-3566mobile phone: +49 151 52 40 66 44 e-mail: alexei.b...@iee.lu
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Andrzej Kozlowski
different aspects of Mathematica (and thus confusing the "naive user"
whose interests you so often claim to represent).
The first "aspect" is that of a computer algebra system. As you know
perfectly well, all computer algebra systems employ certain standard or
canonical forms for representing certain mathematical expression which
arise from algorithmic considerations and sometimes result in output
that differs from standard mathematical practice. One, rather trivial
example, that was discussed recently is Mathematica's outputting
Sqrt[2*n] as Sqrt[2]*Sqrt[n], which is not the normal thing to do in
mathematics. There is, of course, a great deal more of this kind of
thing. Of course one can uses various programming tricks to convert such
output into "standard" mathematics but, as you have yourself pointed
out, it is a a little like "trying to teach a pig to sing". It is easier
to make the necessary changes by hand (enabling "drag and drop" of text
in the Preferences makes it, for me anyway, even easier). Doing such
editing in Mathematica is certainly easier than doing it in TeX, where
you (usually) have to work with the "source".
But then there is the second aspect of Mathematica and that is one of
the things that distinguishes it from all other CAS known to me. It is
also a complete, high quality, WYSIWIG mathematical typesetting system,
capable of producing professional or "near professional" quality
technical publications. If you doubt it, get hold of a copy of William
Shaw's "Complex Analysis with Mathematica", CUP 2006 and see if you can
tell the difference between this and similar books written in TeX.
Actually, as I wrote in my post, I think there is a difference but it
involves very subtle things, like precise spacing, the size of secondary
indices, and some other things that most people don't pay much attention
to. Also, I myself have never succeeded getting Mathematica to produce a
result as nice as Shaw's book, which is why I don't think it is easy.
But Mathematica, even when uses as a "static editor" has lots of
advantages over TeX editors, like the ability to paste high resolution
pictures and parts of pdf files directly into a notebook (at least on
the Mac). When you then print to PDF you get a single pdf file in which
the stuff originally written in Mathematica and the things that were
pasted in are merged seamlessly together. Achieving anything like this
with TeX takes a great deal more effort.
Actually, Shaw's book is also a fine example of how one should approach
Mathematica's input and output in what is primarily a mathematics book.
Shaw clearly distinguishes Mathematica's input and output on the one
hand form "mathematical formula's", on the other and does not attempt to
"tweak" Mathematica's output to make it look more like conventional
mathematics. On the very few occasions where the output looks
different from standard mathematics, Shaw still keeps the Mathematica
form in the output but uses "ordinary" notation in the text. (One such
case involves the spacing between the symbols in a product such as x y,
which in Mathematica's output is too wide compared with the usual
convention in mathematics).
In any case, the point is that Mathematica is a fully capable
mathematics typesetting system and the fact that it is also a CAS does
not in any essential way diminish these capabilities. Personally I find
it still too hard to achieve results as good as with TeX, particularly
for the kind of mathematics that I do (e.g. Mahematica is not very good
and producing "commutative diagrams" etc), but there is no reason, in
principle, why it should not become as good in the future. The fact that
it is a CAS is no obstacle.
Andrzej Kozlowski
On 12 Jul 2011, at 16:08, Richard Fateman wrote:
> On 7/12/2011 3:59 AM, Andrzej Kozlowski wrote:
>> On 8 Jul 2011, at 10:52, Richard Fateman wrote:
>>
>>> I find it far preferable to take stuff out of a computer algebra system
>>> as TeX and paste it into a static document. This also provides an
>>> opportunity to fix the broken displays. E.g. we really don't expect a
>>> display of f=ma to come out f=am. Or E=mc^2 to come out e=c^2m
>>> (note also that E=2.718... not energy). Mathematica thinks it knows
>>> better than Einstein and Newton.
>>
>>
>> This argument is entirely bogus.
>
> So you don't do what I do.
>
> If you really want to produce a "static
>> document" in Mathematica there is no need to evaluate anything. You
>> enter f=ma and it stays that way.
>
> No, I would take stuff I computed, (which might as, sub-expressions, include forms with particular mnemonic value such as f=ma...) and
> paste them into a static document.
> You can also write E=mc^2 or
>> whatever you like and it will stay this way too. This is so obvious it
>> is hard to believe anyone could fail to have noticed it.
> It is hard to believe that anyone could believe that I was interested in pasting a text or non-evaluable expression re-rendered in TeX from Mathematica into a TeX document. Of course the intent would be to take stuff that you have computed in a computer algebra system and paste it in to a static document. E.g. "Here is the result of our algorithm as computed in Mathematica, with terms rearranged slightly for ease of comprehension : .... insert TeX here .... "
>
>>
>> Of course things are different when evaluated output is concerned but it
>> also obvious that it is much easier to "fix it" in Mathematica than to
>> copy and paste into TeX and then fix it there.
>>
>> There are good reasons for using TeX instead of Mathematica for journal
>> articles (I almost always do so myself) but very few of them were given
>> in this thread (and none in the above passage). One of the main reasons
>> is that in fact it is often very hard and sometimes perhaps impossible
>> to produce in Mathematica mathematical documents of the kind of
>> professional quality that is expected by mathematics journals.
>
> So you do exactly what I do. Just wanted to argue, I suppose.
> RJF
Armand Tamzarian
> David,
>
> This is a very nice presentation, and a very tempting technique.
> However, it is a presentation, rather than the article, and without
> your explanations it is difficult to catch many things in it. Have you
> may be a sort of an article or tutorial on this subject? That would be
> very helpful.
>
> Best, Alexei
Alexei,
David's presentation is very good. There is also this:
tutorial/StoringAndTrackingPaletteStates
As an example of using TaggingRules, in this video I make use of
TaggingRules as well as variables within DynamicModule
http://ibnhconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/06/styling-tables-in-mathematica.html
The downloadable version does not contain TaggingRules however.
cheers
Mike
>
> For strategies and techniques for doing things like this using
>
> tagging, take a look at
>
> http://scientificarts.com/worklife/conference2008.html
>
> Best,
>
> David
>
> On Jul 4, 6:44 am, dr DanW <dmaxwar... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Pulling back from the meta-issue of literate engineering, this is the second time in as many months the topic of hiding cells for publishing documentation has come up in this forum. I think I will experiment a little with using cell tags to mark cells for hiding (closing) so switching between the development and publishing layout is just a button click. If I come up with something I am happy with, I'll post it under a new thread.
>
>
>
> > Daniel
>
> Alexei BOULBITCH, Dr., habil.
>
> IEE S.A.
>
> ZAE Weiergewan,
>
> 11, rue Edmond Reuter,
>
> L-5326 Contern, LUXEMBOURG
>
> Office phone : +352-2454-2566
>
> Office fax: +352-2454-3566
>
> mobile phone: +49 151 52 40 66 44
>
> e-mail: alexei.boulbi...@iee.lu
Richard Fateman
>
>> I find it far preferable to take stuff out of a computer algebra system
>> as TeX and paste it into a static document. This also provides an
>> opportunity to fix the broken displays. E.g. we really don't expect a
>> display of f=ma to come out f=am. Or E=mc^2 to come out e=c^2m
>> (note also that E=2.718... not energy). Mathematica thinks it knows
>> better than Einstein and Newton.
>
>
> This argument is entirely bogus.
So you don't do what I do.
If you really want to produce a "static
> document" in Mathematica there is no need to evaluate anything. You
> enter f=ma and it stays that way.
No, I would take stuff I computed, (which might as, sub-expressions,
include forms with particular mnemonic value such as f=ma...) and
paste them into a static document.
You can also write E=mc^2 or
> whatever you like and it will stay this way too. This is so obvious it
> is hard to believe anyone could fail to have noticed it.
It is hard to believe that anyone could believe that I was interested in
pasting a text or non-evaluable expression re-rendered in TeX from
Mathematica into a TeX document. Of course the intent would be to take
stuff that you have computed in a computer algebra system and paste it
in to a static document. E.g. "Here is the result of our algorithm as
computed in Mathematica, with terms rearranged slightly for ease of
comprehension : .... insert TeX here .... "
>
> Of course things are different when evaluated output is concerned but it
> also obvious that it is much easier to "fix it" in Mathematica than to
> copy and paste into TeX and then fix it there.
>
> There are good reasons for using TeX instead of Mathematica for journal
> articles (I almost always do so myself) but very few of them were given
> in this thread (and none in the above passage). One of the main reasons
> is that in fact it is often very hard and sometimes perhaps impossible
> to produce in Mathematica mathematical documents of the kind of
> professional quality that is expected by mathematics journals.
So you do exactly what I do. Just wanted to argue, I suppose.
RJF
>
Murray Eisenberg
that's often the default.
Inserting a graphic via a mark-up command in the source (which would
then be included, in its entirety, in sch a pdf output) is straightforward.
But with TeX, even copy-and-paste with a graphic is simple if you use
the LyX interface to LaTeX.
On 7/13/11 3:10 AM, Andrzej Kozlowski wrote:
>
> ...Mathematica, even when uses as a "static editor" has lots of
> advantages over TeX editors, like the ability to paste high resolution
> pictures and parts of pdf files directly into a notebook (at least on
> the Mac). When you then print to PDF you get a single pdf file in which
> the stuff originally written in Mathematica and the things that were
> pasted in are merged seamlessly together. Achieving anything like this
> with TeX takes a great deal more effort....
Andrzej Kozlowski
only interesting part. That is: copying *a part* of a pdf and pasting
it into another pdf to get a third one. I don't think TeX is of any help
with that. You can do it with the full Adobe Acrobat, but it is not free
and it is not nearly as simple as selecting a part of a pdf with the
mouse, copying it (only on the Mac) pasting the selected part into
Mathematica, adding some more stuff, and printing to pdf.
Andrzej Kozlowski
JUN
of quick and easy document preparation, with the ability to export to
many reasonable formats such as PDF, and XML.
But just to set the record straight, because it was mentioned as an
important feature that TeX doesn't offer: in LyX on Mac OS X
(mentioned by Murray as a LaTeX frontend), you can in fact paste PDF
directly from the clipboard.
Jens
On Jul 14, 6:24 pm, Andrzej Kozlowski <a...@mimuw.edu.pl> wrote:
> You explained what everyone (or almost everyone) knows but omitted the
> only interesting part. That is: copying *a part* of a pdf and pasting
> it into another pdf to get a third one. I don't think TeX is of any help
> with that. You can do it with the full Adobe Acrobat, but it is not free
> and it is not nearly as simple as selecting a part of a pdf with the
> mouse, copying it (only on the Mac) pasting the selected part into
> Mathematica, adding some more stuff, and printing to pdf.
>
> Andrzej Kozlowski
>
> On 14 Jul 2011, at 11:22, Murray Eisenberg wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Producing a single pdf output file is today trivial in TeX -- in fact,
> > that's often the default.
>
> > Inserting a graphic via a mark-up command in the source (which would
> > then be included, in its entirety, in sch a pdf output) is straightforw=
W. Craig Carter
I have an application that I'd like to distribute as a .cdf file.
However, the application uses disk i/o to interact with qhull (an open
source convex hull swiss army knife).
It uses something like the following which I can get to work on Windows
and Mac platforms:
inputdata = dataAppropriateforQHULL;
Export[infile, inputdata];
cmd = "/sw/bin/qconvex Fx i n < " <> infile <> " >" <> outfile;
Run[cmd];
hulldata = Import[outfile, "TABLE"];
However, this relies on disk i/o and given a previous response on this
group:
On 8 Jul, 2011, at 4:54 AM, John Fultz wrote:
>
>
> But, in version 8, the situation has changed significantly.
Mathematica can now
> directly create and maintain CDF (or sometimes called "FreeCDF")
files. Player
> can play CDF files. CDF, as they might say, is the new NBP. There
remain, of
> course, some restrictions as to what can be accomplished in the
Player. The
> broadest category of items is that CDF files created directly by
Mathematica
> cannot store new content to disk. They can't use Export[], save
files, etc. (*)
It appears that this strategy wouldn't work. Does anyone know of a
work-around (i.e., streams to stdin and stdout for qhull)? I can see
that I could probably learn to use mathlink and the qhull libraries.
But, this will make distribution more tedious.
Thanks, Craig