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Re: Re: Re: Limit of an expression?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg67680] Re: [mg67608] Re: [mg67557] Re: Limit of an expression?
  • From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>
  • Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2006 01:58:05 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <NDBBJGNHKLMPLILOIPPOGEOJFAAA.djmp@earthlink.net> <897B882E-E319-435D-8ACD-495FDA431890@mimuw.edu.pl>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

On 3 Jul 2006, at 06:32, Andrzej Kozlowski wrote:

> If you past into mail program a Greek letter form Mathematica or  
> the sign â?¤  the entire message will be posted as Unicode. These  
> messages when they return to me sometimes appear illegible (because  
> of the way the mail server is set up) but one mouse move to the  
> TextEncoding menu makes them legible. I do not think it is to much  
> to exact that Mathgroup users should learn to use their e-mail  
> programs.


I think I had better explain it more carefully. The MathGroup server  
is, in fact, set up correctly; sorry for claiming otherwise. For  
example, the message I posted containing the text below:

(Limit[(1 - E^((-
μ)*t*(s - 1 - λ/μ)))/
       (s - 1 - λ/μ),
      t -> Infinity,
      Assumptions ->
       {μ > 0 && #1[s,
          1 + λ/μ]}] & ) /@
    {Greater, Equal, Less}

{-(μ/(λ - s*μ + μ)),
    0, Infinity}

was copied (as InputForm) from a Mathematica notebook and posted with  
Apple's Mail. Because of the presence of Greek characters it was sent  
automatically (I did not even think about it) as Unicode. When I  
received it back from the MathGroup mail server it was perfectly  
legible, since Mail recognized it as Unicode automatically (that  
means the server did not insert any false encoding information as  
some baldy set up mail servers are want to do).  However, when I  
received a message from David, containing a quote from my original  
message, the above text was not legible, since the header of David's  
message contained the information


which prevents the text being automatically recognized as Unicode by  
Mail. However, in such a case selecting the message and performing a  
simple move with the pointer to the item Text Encoding in Mail's  
Message menu and choosing Unicode (UTF-8) makes everything appear  
legible again. After that it can be pasted into Mathematica without  
any further problems.
Here I am tempted to add a personal observation.  From my past  
experience on several mailing lists I have noticed that people who  
complain about similar problems are almost always Windows users. I am  
not saying that Windows mail programs are inferior to Mac ones, in  
fact I am quite sure that they can do all the same things and perhaps  
even more. However,  it seems to me that it would be almost  
impossible  for an Apple Mail user to fail to notice the Text  
Encoding menu and at least to wonder what it might be for. I suspect  
that users of Microsoft programs are so accustomed to having a large  
number of menus and buttons and so on whose purpose they do not  
understand they never even ask such questions.

Andrzej Kozlowski
Tokyo, Japan



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