Re: WYSIWYG text editor for Mathematica?
- To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
- Subject: [mg354] Re: [mg344] WYSIWYG text editor for Mathematica?
- From: "Ronald D. Notestine" <ronald at sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp>
- Date: Mon, 26 Dec 94 03:29:52 +0900
I saw a demonstration of the next major version of Mathematica given in Tokyo Dec 10, by Theo Gray and Paul Wellin. I was extremely impressed. What they showed seemed to nearly allow one to operate on screen in, visualy, almost the same manner as one would on paper. All of the various special symbols, mathematical, physical, chemical, etc. Entry into matrices in an array (that grows to accomodate size of entries as well as numbers os rows/cols.) Complete editing allowed in equations laid out just as we write them on paper or chalkboard. All symbols availble as unique entities. Unicode is used so that all syumbols, including characters for Japanese, Chinse etc., have their own code number (alpha + a no longer equals 2 times a). A variety of palettes as well keyboard methods are provided to input special symbols. It is late over here, and I am undoubtedly not doing justice to what they showed. It was very impressive in its capabilities, seemed very well thought out in its execution, and thoroughly well integrated with the system. It included much more that just WYSIWYG. e.g. Notebooks will be just another mma object with head "Notebook". The system shown was described as a "first stage alpha" system. (The demo notebooks they showed referred to it sometimes as version 2.3 and sometimes as 3.0. If they implement eveything they showed, they should definitely call it version 3.0!!) The earliest possible relese date was given as this spring, although both Wellin and Gray emphasized that this was only assuming no problems in the beta test (which has yet to begin). I do not know how well it would do for math typesetting only. There are undoubdtedly necessary capabilities that I would not think of off hand. (A possible one I can think of is double column printing. That was definitely ruled out in answer to a question.) However, it was a stunning demostration. A large number of participants much more knowledgeable than I am also seemed very impressed. Ron Notestine