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Re: Re: Re: Limit of an expression?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg67710] Re: [mg67608] Re: [mg67557] Re: Limit of an expression?
  • From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>
  • Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 04:18:12 -0400 (EDT)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Indeed, I now recall that something like this used to be the case on  
Mac OS 9, before Mac OS X and Mathematica 5.0. It is no longer so. I  
assume this means that Mac OS X and Mathematica for Mac OS X are now  
more closely integrated with Unicode than Windows is (is that right?  
Does anyone know?) Anyway, Copy and Paste, whether as InputForm or  
not, even if one uses Copy As Text, under Mac OS X and with Cocoa  
based applications like Mail, always result in a "genuine" Greek  
letters and an e-mail message containing such text is automatically  
posted in Unicode. It may be that this would not happen if I used an  
old text application that does not support Unicode, or some old mail  
program, but I no longer have any.

However, I feel I should now apologize to Ingolf for accusing him of  
not testing his advice before sending it. I am sorry, I did not  
imagine that there could be so much difference in this respect  
between the Mac and Windows. The problem is, of course, that in cases  
like this one should never assume that other platforms work in the  
same way as the one we are ourselves using.

Andrzej Kozlowski


On 4 Jul 2006, at 11:57, David Park wrote:

> This is what I get if I do a straight copy and paste on the  
> following expression with Greek letters and the weak inequality sign.
>
> 2\[Alpha] + 3\[Pi] <= 3
>
> It can be copied and pasted (I paste it back as Plain Text using  
> Paste As to get the correct font size - but I think that is a  
> result of some of my Windows settings.) The letters appear as  
> proper Greek letters in the notebook.
>
> The real problem is when there is a boxed expression. Then I  
> convert it to InputForm to give, for example, the following.
>
> Integrate[E^x, x]
>
> This will paste back in as is, that is as InputForm, but it can be  
> converted to StandardForm with the boxed structures simply by  
> placing the cursor in the cell and typing Shift-Ctrl-N.
>
> I'll admit that the longer expressions for Greek letters is not  
> quite as nice in a posting but it can all be copied and pasted and  
> works properly in notebooks for everyone.
>
> David Park
> djmp at earthlink.net
> http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/
>
> From: Andrzej Kozlowski [mailto:akoz at mimuw.edu.pl]
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
>
> (tm) Pro*
> David,
>
> InputForm (and Copy As Text) have no effect at all on Greek symbols,
> at least on Mac OS X with Apple Mail (however, I don't think the e-
> mail client could have anything to do with this). The other thing
> that sometimes causes problems is the weak inequality sign: <=  and
> in this case converting to InputForm does help. I sometimes forget to
> do this because after pasting the TraditinalForm of weak inequality
> into Mail it continues to look fine. However, in the case of Greek
> symbols there is no other choice that I know of but replacing them by
> Latin letters. I believe that doing this is up to the original poster
> of a message and not up to people responding to it.
>
>
> Andrzej Kozlowski
>
>
> On 4 Jul 2006, at 01:37, David Park wrote:
>
>> Andrzej,
>>
>> I'm running on Windows98 with Microsoft Outlook 2000 Version
>> 9.0.0.2711. I cannot afford to update soon.
>>
>> My email is set to Unicode UTF-8 encoding for both sending and
>> receiving.
>>
>> I cannot read or use much of the code you paste into postings.
>>
>> As for me, I have a palette on my desktop that will copy and
>> convert Mathematica code to InputForm, which I then paste into my
>> postings. I'm under the impression that everybody can read them and
>> copy and paste them into notebooks.
>>
>> David Park
>> djmp at earthlink.net
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/
>>
>>
>> From: Andrzej Kozlowski [mailto:akoz at mimuw.edu.pl]
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
>>
>>
>> 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
>>
>> Content-Type: 	text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> 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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