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Re: How edit a saved palette?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg85257] Re: How edit a saved palette?
• From: David Bailey <dave at Remove_Thisdbailey.co.uk>
• Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 03:16:28 -0500 (EST)
• References: <fo3gk8$c4o$1@smc.vnet.net>

Murray Eisenberg wrote:
> I have a palette somebody else wrote, which I want to edit.  So I have 
> no "source code" notebook for it.  I want to edit it, preferably in an 
> environment that understands Mathematica syntax.
> 
> Obviously, just opening it in Mathematica won't do: it appears as a palette.
> 
> I certainly don't want to edit it in some text editor, for that messes 
> up the cache and knows nothing about Mathematica syntax.
> 
> And I don't see how to edit it in Wolfram Workbench: If I try to Import 
> it, no matter whether I specify Initialization cells or Input cells, I 
> seem to get nothing -- just a message about the nb file from which 
> (nothing!??) was imported.
> 
> Recommendations?
> 
Hi Murray,

First, editing a notebook with a text editor is painful, but the fact 
that it messes up the cache does not really matter. You will find 
Mathematica reports this error when you first load the notebook, but if 
you save it again, the cache corrects itself. I have used this fact many 
times over the years to achieve various obscure changes.

I can certainly see there are problems here, but one way might be to 
take a copy of your palette notebook, and open it with NotebookOpen. 
That will give you a Notebookobject that you can use in two possible ways:

1)  You could use SetOptions[nbobj,...] to change various options to 
mimic an ordinary notebook, edit the result, and reverse the changes. 
Options would certainly include ClickSelect and WindowFrame, and 
Editable, but probably more.

2)  Do a NotebookGet[nbobj], manipulate that structure using Mathematica 
commands, and save the result with NotebookPut - messy, but it might be 
good for a one-off application.

David Bailey
http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk