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Re: Format menu problem

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg63880] Re: [mg63854] Format menu problem
  • From: "David Park" <djmp at earthlink.net>
  • Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 04:32:34 -0500 (EST)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Type

1+1

Select the cell bracket and use Menu -> Cell -> Cell Properties and you will
see Cell Open, Cell Editable and Cell Evaluatable.

Now copy it down and show the expression to obtain

Cell[BoxData[
    RowBox[{"1", "+", "1"}]], "Input",
  CellLabel->"In[1]:="]

Select the cell bracket and use Menu -> Cell -> Cell Properties and you will
see that it is no longer evaluatable. You can also see this by the
horizontal bar on the cell bracket. So by leaving it in cell expression mode
you eliminated it from the style sheet as you surmised.

In notebook style sheets, command key numbers are assigned for headings,
sections, input and text cells IN THE ORDER THEY ARE ENCOUNTERED. So when
the cell type was eliminated it reassigned all the command key numbers for
the remaining cell types.

This is a source of some irritation because when people design new style
sheets they usually take no notice of this. If a new type of heading,
Abstract say, is created in the Headings Section of the style sheet, it will
change the key numbers for other common cell types. I use these keys all the
time so when the keys do not give me the cell type I expect there is a lot
of grumbling. It is not reasonable to expect users to adopt new hot keys
with a new style sheet.

If one wants to define a new heading type, say, it does not have to be in
the normal Headings Section of the style sheet notebook. One can create a
new Section further down in the style sheet, after all the conventional cell
types, and put the new heading cell type there. It won't have a hot key,
because they only go from 1 to 9 (I think), but it is better not to
interfere with the regular key assignments.

It might be better if there was a more controlled method for assigning hot
keys to cell types.

David Park
djmp at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/


From: AES [mailto:siegman at stanford.edu]
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net


OK, here's what happened (I think -- seeking enlightenment as usual):

I did some editing on the Default.nb style sheet using the Edit Style
Sheet menu command, and then, when I Saved the changes and Closed the
Default.nb notebook, I accidentally left one of the modification cells
for the style Subsection open in "Show Expression" mode rather than
cancelling the Show Expression for it.

The net result, when I went back to my working notebook, was that the
Subsubsection style, which is normally cmd-6 in the Format >> Style
menu, had completely disappeared from that menu, so that Text was now
cmd-6, Small Text was cmd-7, Input was cmd-8, and so on (the Subsection
style, cmd 5, was still there -- it was the following one that had
disappeared).  And, in other notebooks, those lower-down key commands
functioned with their new values.

This persisted even after Quitting Mathematica and reopening it.

I then went back, re-edited the Default style sheet, discovered my
error, and reversed Show Expression on the Subsection cell; that's all I
did; and everything seems back to normal.  But it doesn't seem it should
have worked this way (if in fact I'm correctly interpreting how it did
happen).  Doesn't a cell evaluate normally even when displayed in Show
Expression mode?  Might it be more sensible for cells to auto drop out
of Show Expression mode when the notebook is closed?



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