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Package development

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg62545] Package development
  • From: tt at tt.com
  • Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 02:41:37 -0500 (EST)
  • Organization: National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada
  • Reply-to: tt at tt.com
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Just completed the online Wolfram course on programming. That was
desperatly needed! Been using (sporadically) and reading about Mathematica 
since version 3 (including 2nd edition of Maeder's book), but there is
nothing like hearing someone (Wellin) focusing you on the important
stuff. Even if given online, this was a great thing to follow. I am
surprised that these formations are not discussed more often in this
newsgroup. I guess that many would find answers to their question by
taking this short formation (if they have a good boss that can cover
the expense...).

Now the question. I have written a few packages in the past. More
recently, I am always questioning myself to know if I should develop
it directly in an ASCII .m file or use the notebook format  and rely
on the autosave package feature (initialization cells). I like the
idea of  developing the package in the notebook format to have all the
formatting features that ease reading, but at the same time, I hate to
loose all the comments I put in when the *.m file is created. Of
course I could put comments in the input lines of the notebook, but
then I am better writing the ASCII file. Also, I could save the
notebook as a package through "Save as Special" (that puts all the
headers and text in comments, which is not done with the autosave
package feature), but this is not an automated way of doing things. I
am just seeking opinions from Mathematica power users. Which way do you
develop packages?

Cordially.

GL


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