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Inconsistent syntax for Row and Column?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg92728] Inconsistent syntax for Row and Column?
• From: "michael.p.croucher at googlemail.com" <michael.p.croucher at googlemail.com>
• Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:46:53 -0400 (EDT)

Hi all

If I want to format all of the Elements in a column such that they are
displayed in the Times New Roman font and coloured blue then I might
do this:

Column[{"hello", "world"}, BaseStyle -> {Blue, FontFamily -> "Times"}]

Which works nicely.  Since a row is just the transpose of a column you
might expect the same syntax to work with Row (I certainly did) but

Row[{"hello", "world"}, BaseStyle -> {Blue, FontFamily -> "Times"}]

gives the following output:

(Row[{"hello", "world"}, BaseStyle -> {RGBColor[0, 0, 1], FontFamily -
> "Times"}])

Since the second argument in Row defines a separator.  Would it be
more reasonable for these two functions to have similar syntax?  Of
course one solution to the row formatting problem is to do

Style[Row[{"hello", "world"}], {FontFamily -> "Times", Blue}]

but it baffles me as to why these two functions were set up with such
different syntax.

Cheers,
Mike

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Inconsistent syntax for Row and Column?
    • From: Murray Eisenberg <murray@math.umass.edu>