Transfering Packages from Windows to Mac
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg42020] Transfering Packages from Windows to Mac
- From: "David Park" <djmp at earthlink.net>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 03:58:17 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Dear MathGroup, WRI claims that Mathematica notebooks and packages are platform independent. My experience is that this claim is less that true. Packages and notebooks written on Windows systems cannot be reliably used on Mac systems. Specifically I have written a complex analysis application that also uses my DrawGraphics package. I have set my Mathematica system so ShortBoxForm -> False when saving all files. When Bobby Treat runs the application on his Windows system he has no difficulties. Murray Eisenberg has also run it on Windows without problems. When another friend, Rip Pelletier, runs it on his Mac using Version 4.1 he runs into parsing errors. The package (.m) files have "\" continuation characters in them. Rip finds that if he edits out a few particular cases of these, ones associated with the error message statements, then the package runs properly. But surely, one cannot expect Mac users to go through and edit package files! What is the cause of this problem and is there any solution for it? Are there some settings in Mac systems that have to be correct to avoid the problem? I am very concerned with making these packages work properly on a Mac. If there is anyone who has Version 4.2.1 on a Mac, an interest in complex analysis, and who would like to test it out for me, I would be glad for the assistance. The package has a suite of graphics routines for representing complex functions that are combined in a uniform system. One can have one or two panel plots or one and two panel animations. Each panel can contain any of a number of plot types: surface plots, coded surface plots (one real function coded as a contour plot on the surface of another real function), complex map type plots, vector plots (complex values represented as vectors attached to an arbitrary set of points), contour plots, coded density plots (using an arbitrary color function to code complex information), Riemann sphere plots (arbitrary 2D graphics mapped to the Riemann sphere). Built-in animations are rotations of 3D surfaces and homotopies between two complex functions in any of the plot types. Other kinds of animations are also easy to do. David Park djmp at earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/