Re: Trying to use Mathematica as "word processor" for my math homework
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg44417] Re: Trying to use Mathematica as "word processor" for my math homework
- From: "Steve Luttrell" <luttrell at _removemefirst_westmal.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 04:50:58 -0500 (EST)
- References: <bo7oud$aj1$1@smc.vnet.net> <bofsl1$5ko$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
> I have found Mathematica to be so incompetent at basic typesetting, > and its behavior so bizarre and unpredicatble, that I would never use > it for what you are doing. I wouldn't have put it as strongly as that, but I know what you mean. I think the default behaviour of the various Mathematica style sheets is not what you would expect if you are used to a standard wordprocessor (e.g. MS Word). I have spent a lot of time trying to discover how to coerse Mathematica into typesetting things the way I want, and I have been defeated in only a handful of cases (e.g. WYSIWYG multiple-column formatting, outdented paragraph numbering that is correctly aligned with the first line of the paragraph, etc). I wish things were documented better and lots of examples given (maybe it is - but WHERE is it?) to save us the time rediscovering how to make Mathematica do the typesetting we want. It seems that a long learning curve is quite a tradition with Mathematica. FWIW I have written many technical papers using Mathematica, which I also use to develop the research and generate the results that appear in my papers. I used to use MS Word and LaTeX, but now I can't imagine not using Mathematica despite having to solve cryptic (but very logical) puzzles in order to make it do what I want. -- Steve Luttrell West Malvern, UK