Re: Using Mathematica 5.2 and 7.01 with separate

[A. B.]

Despite what everybody says, including people from Wolfram, it is not
possible to have two versions of Mathematica installed at the same time
without taking special precautions beforehand. I tried (on Mac) but it is
too cumbersome and I have given up.

> Hello,
> I have both installed Mathematica v.5.2 and 7.01 and I would like to
> use each of them with separate setting. At this moment when I change
> any option in Options Inspector of Mathematica 7 it also affects
> Mathematica 5.2 and leads to error messages when I launch v.5.2. Why
> this happens? And how to force each version to use its own separate
> settings?
>

[John Fultz]

Evaluate:

SetOptions[$FrontEnd, VersionedPreferences -> True]

(or the VersionedPreferences option can also be set from the option inspector).
Without specifics, I can't comment on the exact problems you've been having.
But the above setting forces the preferences file to split into a different file
for every major version.

Best to set this in v7, which should leave 5.2 with a clean set of preferences.

Sincerely,

John Fultz
jfu...@wolfram.com
User Interface Group
Wolfram Research, Inc.

[Andrzej Kozlowski]

Strange because I have versions 5.2, 6.03 and 7.01 all installed on my
MacBook right now, and I quite frequently use the older versions,
particulalry when I get a weird looking answer from the latest one. I
have been doing this sort of thing with older and newer versions for a
decade and have yet to encounter a problem.

I think it must be the first time in my life I actually managed
something "impossible".

Andrzej Kozlowski

[Nag]

John:

Can you elaborate on this issue, assuming one installs from scratch
two versions, say 5.2 and 7?

Thanks