Re: Antw: pdf-export
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg44494] Re: Antw: pdf-export
- From: "Peltio" <peltio at twilight.zone>
- Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 08:01:42 -0500 (EST)
- References: <BBC5445D.62E8%J.A.Solomon@city.ac.uk> <bo7pn7$ane$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Reply-to: "Peltio" <peltioNOSP at Miname.com.invalid>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
(I am sending this again since it did not show up to the group - I've noticed that since I've changed provider I forgot to add a valid (though munged) e-mail address in reply-to, maybe that was the problem) "Joe Gwinn" wrote >Very few of my collaborators in the engineeering world have even heard of Mathematica, never mind have a copy. Trying to convince my collaborators to abandon Word is hopeless; they would just roll their eyes. Perhaps buying Mathematica just for word processing is not a very good investment, considering that there are free (but IMHO not as intuitive) packages that can be used for professional mathematical typesetting. And yet I wonder whether in Wolfram they ever considered the option of turning the MathReader into a MathWriter (obviously without the computational engine : ))) ). Since it is far easier to input mathematical notation with mathematica than it is to compose puzzles in Word's Equation Editor, it would be a tremendous way to spread Mathematica around - it could even make it a standard in math publishing at the level of TeX. >And I can just imagine the wailing if they tried to learn Mathematica. >Despite the marketing bafflegab from Wolfram, Mathematica is not >"easy to learn", it's a full-rank programming language, Well, but as long as your collaborators do not need to write or run mma code (and Word does not allow to do that) the only part of Mathematica they would have to learn is that related to typesetting. I think that the real hurdle is the cost (it would be like buying a Ferrari just to use its lights as slide projectors) and the absence of 'hard tabs' and tables "a la' Word" that make a notebook's layout essentially one dimensional (I had very little time to play with a version with Author Tools but the way I've found to put text and pictures side by side did not fully satisfy me ). Of course people at Wolfram might know that many customers would not buy Mathematica if a MathWriter were available for free, so why would they want to give their work away for free? But, seriously, how many people has bought or will buy Mathematica just as a word processor? > so people need to have real motivation to undertake such an effort. Perhaps "Download the MathWriter. It's free and it's easy to input mathematical notation with it." would work miracles. : ))) And there would be fewer engineers who would have not even heard of Mathematica. Perhaps I am too naive. cheers, Peltio just wondering, nothing more.