fellow authors

[1s1k]

For those that are writing a book using Mathematica. What program are
you using for the book, Mathematica? If so how are you setting it
up?

I am making each of my chapters a separate note book, and using the
default setting.

I have run across author tools in a book "Mathematica Navigator" by
Keikki Ruskeepaa. He used an Author program that was an add on in
mathematica 5. What I have found out about this program in version 6,
is that it is not very good. Is there another add on for writing a
text book?

thanks
Prof. Jake

[David Park]

Do you mean that the book will be in the form of Mathematica notebooks and
not printed in static form? In that case you can do wonderful things because
of all the graphical and dynamic capabilities of Mathematica.

I think that the proper tool will be Wolfram Workbench - but unfortunately
it is not yet in shape for this purpose. Any book will probably have enough
new routines to warrant one or more packages that go with the book. Then a
'book project' would consist of the packages, one or more folders that
contained all the book notebooks (perhaps with their own style sheet) and
documentation. The documentation would not only link to the package function
pages, but also to the set of book notebooks and the notebooks could link
back to the rest of the documentation. The first page of the documentation
would probably be a table of contents to the book, and also links to any
package documentation. But all of this was very ragged and not basically
working in the last Workbench. There is also a problem when some of the
packages are loaded with a stub package using DeclarePackage statements. I
think that WRI is aware of the problems and possibilities but we just have
to wait and see what gets implemented.

If this kind of structure were implemented in Workbench, then it could be
used not only for books, but would also be convenient for college courses,
research projects, consulting projects and one's own self-study of existing
books or topics.

One of the objectives I have for the Presentations package is to be able to
write notebooks that look much more like regular textbooks or research
papers. Some of the features it has are: routines to keep a set of
references in whatever style you want; keeping automatically numbered key
equations; writing fairly general ellipses expressions and converting them
to regular Mathematica statements; formatting 'page' displays that hide the
Mathematica specifications and concentrate on the subject matter; gathering
multiple-page calculations, proofs and derivations into compact spaces that
show the structure of the derivation and in which pages can be individually
displayed or launched in separate windows; the implementation of sidebar
notebooks. If you wish, you can write notebooks that show no Input/Output
statements at all. How many Input/Output statements do you see in regular
textbooks?

For those who want to see an example of this style I have a PDF version of a
notebook on a derivation of the area swept out by the focal angle in an
ellipse using a very nice method presented by David Cantrell. The notebook
goes all the way from the definition of an ellipse to plotting orbits around
the sun and everything is done actively with Mathematica. If you wish a copy
just send me an email. Of course, the PDF doesn't have the active dynamic
capabilities that the notebook has.

--
David Park
djm...@comcast.net
http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/

"1s1k" <pennsylv...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:gbulcp$l4v$1...@smc.vnet.net...

[pajake]

Thanks David

What I was trying to say, is that the only way that I know, is to make
each chapter into a note book document. Then some how combine the
notebooks into a book. But from what I read with Author tools, this way
presents problems such as references (and I have many of them), hyper
links, table of contents and index. The Author tools sounds like it
puts it all together. All of this sounds great, but then I found out
that it will not work with version 6.

The final book would be like a regular text book, except it will have a
CD of the book inside it. This way the students or researchers will not
have to type in the code. They can just load in what ever note book or
what ever I use, and work with it. I always taught my students, from
freshmen to grad, to play with the code. This is why I want to include
my own work on a CD. I hated in the 60's to rewrite the Fortran code
that was in a book. I ended up with more mistakes that if I typed it my
self, but it was what I had to do then. Even though my book is for
upper grad. students and post grad, I still think the CD would be of
benefit to them.

I have never tried the workbench that you mentioned. WRI will not send
me a CD of it. I cannot down load it because I only have a dial up
connection, and it would take for ever to get it. Reason for dial up,
disabled and cannot afford high speed.

What is the Presentations package? You are so right about the input and
output statements. This is just one more reason that I am stuck with
what to do.

My book is developing into a 300 - 400 page book. So far I have over a
100 pages not including the drawings and diagrams. It would be nice to
start to set the actual book up, so that I will not have to go back and
redo everything in another format.

I have received one other email, and that prof. used Word for his
format. Even though it was all on the use of Mathematica. This has
really got me confused. I can transfer Mathematica to word, but it does
not look the way I want it to. I have many animations in the book, and
when you transfer them they become static. I guess this brings me back
to the beginning of the circle. I need a Mathematical environment.

Thanks again
Jake