Received: by 10.68.131.71 with SMTP id ok7mr2853913pbb.8.1335775476415;
        Mon, 30 Apr 2012 01:44:36 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Path: r9ni115148pbh.0!nntp.google.com!news2.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!news-out.readnews.com!transit4.readnews.com!newspump.sol.net!posts.news.twtelecom.net!nnrp3.twtelecom.net!not-for-mail
From: David Reiss <dbre...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica
Subject: Re: Creating 'smart' textbooks with mathematica?
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:41:41 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: Steven M. Christensen and Associates, Inc and MathTensor, Inc.
Sender: st...@smc.vnet.net
Approved: Steven M. Christensen <st...@smc.vnet.net>, Moderator
Message-ID: <jnlj85$n39$1@smc.vnet.net>
References: <jnilt6$ahg$1@smc.vnet.net>
Lines: 47
NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Apr 2012 08:44:36 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: 3e6cc330.news.twtelecom.net
X-Trace: DXC=LEf=_7KVge;FBbH8L=5S6:C_A=>8kQj6=2f3;U>_oji9e?iEmmbagJ<EFiONJ7[Go6M0[4<=\7316
X-Complaints-To: abuse@twtelecom.net

The short answer to this is that there are many ways to program this
in Mathematica and, indeed, many ways to programmatically interact
with a notebook or notebooks in pretty much arbitrary ways. Start to
read up on Notebook Programming, style sheets, and tagging.  This will
give you a start on getting a sense of the wide scope of
possibilities.

Best,
David


On Apr 29, 2:08 am, luke wallace <lukewallace1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a technical PDF that is hard to read because you could be on
> pave 500 and it will tell you to "refer sections 1.1.4.5, 2.2.1.5,
> 3.4.3.2, and 6.1.2.4 for the rest of the information you need."
>
> So you have to jump around the book, finding these sections, going
> back and forth all day.
>
> If Mathematica could automatically create 'links' to jump to section
> headers throughout the whole book in one command for every section
> header, then this would revolutionize the functionality of technical e-
> books and make them ten times easier to understand.
>
> In all technical books, the actual "Section 1.1" for example is always
> different than the mere reference to "Section 1.1" because the real
> one will be in bold, italics, a bigger font size, etc no matter where
> it is actually randomly located.
>
> Going through one by one and creating interlinks would take forever,
> this one book alone I have has about 12,000 needed to be made.
>
> So, if Mathematica could simply link all font size 10 text to the font
> size 14 text of an identical string for all duplicate text strings
> found, it would do this for all 12,000 references automatically!
>
> Another way would be to link all non-bold font strings to their bold
> counterparts.
>
> Currently, Acrobat X, InDesign, FrameMaker, MS Word, and others can't
> do this based on merely font size or font style.
>
> Can anyone find a way to do this? By the way, I can easily convert the
> PDF to Mathematica since the PDF has editable text. So that isn't an
> obstacle.