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Mac, Mathematica, and AuthorTools: Another suffix gotcha

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg69927] Mac, Mathematica, and AuthorTools: Another suffix gotcha
• From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
• Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 06:05:52 -0400 (EDT)
• Organization: Stanford University

Mac OS X lets you save files without adding the file-type suffixes and 
view desktop or folder contents (directories) without seeing them.

If you save a Mathematica notebook without the .nb suffix, you can 
dbl-click on the file name or icon and it will open properly in 
Mathematica.

But if you then open the AuthorTools palette and try to use it to make a 
Table of Contents of that notebook, it will not work properly: it either 
returns an unhelpful message in the Messages window and a TOC with a 
bunch of weird stuff in it, or does nothing at all.  Adding the .nb 
suffix fixes everything.

In my experience, anyway.

General lesson:  If you're using software that does some kind of 
automated content-sensitive processing of another document, either 
within the range of that application or outside, and you run into 
trouble, having a missing suffix on the target document may be the 
source of the trouble.