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math versus mathematica

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg13805] math versus mathematica
  • From: David Epstein <dbae at maths.warwick.ac.uk>
  • Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 04:18:27 -0400
  • Organization: University of Warwick, UK
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Under Unix, there are two commands that invoke Mathematica. math invokes
the text-based version and mathematica invokes a notebook version. The
Mathematica book seems to claim that you get the same results whichever
you invoke. But you don't.

The version of Mathematica which we run is Solaris 3.0 (August 21, 1997)
This is the response to $Version for both math and mathematica.

However, the program

txt=
 StyleBox[
    RowBox[{"number ",n," ",
        FractionBox["roman",
          StyleBox["greek",FontSlant\[Rule]"Italic",FontSize\[Rule]24,
            FontFamily\[Rule]"Times",FontColor\[Rule]Hue[0]]]}],
    FontSize\[Rule]18,FontFamily\[Rule]"Arial"];

n=5;

pict = Plot[Sin[x],{x,0,7},Epilog\[Rule]Text[DisplayForm[txt],{3,.7}]];
Display["plot.eps", pict,"eps"];

gives rise to Postscript files that are VERY different. In particular,
under mathematica the Postscript contains several lines which refer to
italics (ignoring case), whereas under math there are no lines in the
Postscript file referring to italics.

Is this a bug? Is there a workaround? It is far more inconvenient for me
to use the front end than the text-based version. In any case, it seems
to me that Mathematica is not living up to the claims made in the
Mathematica Book.

David Epstein


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