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Re: Formatting posts

• To: mathgroup@smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg10796] Re: Formatting posts
• From: Paul Abbott <paul@physics.uwa.edu.au>
• Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 00:58:40 -0500
• Organization: University of Western Australia
• References: <6b3q46$rte@smc.vnet.net>

seanross@worldnet.att.net wrote:

> This is a plea to those who paste bits of code from notebooks into
> e-mail posts on the mathuser group.
> 
> #1 -- Don't expect people to decipher the text version of 2-D code such
> as:
> 
> \!\(\[Integral]\(x\^\(2\ \)\) \[DifferentialD]x\)
> 
> Instead, select your 2-D cell, change the format to InputForm, right
> click on your selection and choose "copy as... text.  Then paste it
> into the email which will give a much more readable:
> 
> Integrate[x^2, x].
> 
> The two bits of code above are the same.  Guess which one will get read!

For short code fragments I often use InputForm.  However, this is very
limiting for larger computations because I like using subscripts and
greek letters. 

To me, the whole point of the typesetting capabilities of the 3.0 front
end is that the first form, when pasted into a Mathematica Notebook,
will automatically format as a readable 2D expression.  Of course, you
can paste Integrate[x^2, x] into a Notebook and then Convert to
TraditionalForm.

> #2 -- Do not paste the text of a notebook into an email message.  Many
> of us have been unable to ever get one of those actually recognized as
> a notebook by following the directions.  Instead, compress your
> notebook into a pkzip compatible self-extracting executable and attach
> it to your message.  

I guess you are using Windows?  Not everyone who reads MathGroup uses
Windows.  A lot of us use Macs or Unix.  pkzip is not a universal
compression scheme.  How about using compress, gzip, StuffIt, or
CompactPro, etc ...

> For short notebooks, append the file itself to the
> email message as long as your email program knows how to keep it as a
> separate file.

IMHO, what is really needed is for Web browsers to be able to handle
Mathematica Notebooks so that they can be pasted and read verbatim
(perhaps a Mathematica Notebook reader plug-in)?

Actually, instead of posting complex Notebooks I often point to a URL
where I have put the Notebook.  In the past I tried posting Notebooks
as attachments to MathGroup.  I've done this in other newsgroups
without problems but, I think because of the moderation of MathGroup,
the attachment somehow gets munged.

Now I simply remove all graphics and append an ASCII version of the
Notebook at the end of the message.

Cheers,
	Paul 

____________________________________________________________________ 
Paul Abbott                                   Phone: +61-8-9380-2734
Department of Physics                           Fax: +61-8-9380-1014
The University of Western Australia            Nedlands WA  6907       
mailto:paul@physics.uwa.edu.au  AUSTRALIA                            
http://www.pd.uwa.edu.au/~paul

            God IS a weakly left-handed dice player
____________________________________________________________________

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  • Re: Re: Formatting posts
    • From: Paul Abbott <paul@physics.uwa.edu.au>