Re: two questions
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg100315] Re: [mg100280] two questions
- From: "David Park" <djmpark at comcast.net>
- Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 07:05:12 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <6499267.1243766421687.JavaMail.root@n11>
First load the package: Needs["packagefolder`packagename`"] Then to obtain the exported names in the package use: ?packagefolder`packagename`* That will list all the names and when you click on one of the names it will display the corresponding usage message. For example, to obtain the names in one of the standard extra packages that come with Mathematica (these don't have their own folder): Needs["ComputationalGeometry`"] ?ComputationalGeometry`* The Presentations package distribution has a small sample package notebook with detailed commentary on how to write and set up you own package. The entire process is quite easy. Basically you set up your package as follows: 1) Find, or create, an Applications folder in your $UserBaseDirectory folder. 2) In this private Applications folder create a folder packagefolder (whatever name you choose) to contain your package. 3) Write a notebook, packagename.nb (whatever name you choose), that will be your package definition notebook. It will contain all the Package statements, usage statements and routine definitions. Make these Initializations cells. 4) When you first save (in the regular way) the packagename.nb it will ask you if it to be saved as an Auto Generated Package. Answer yes. This will create a packagename.m package file. Every time you update packagename.nb, packagename.m will also be automatically updated. You should never have to look at the contents of packagename.m. 5) You load the package as above. Probably the best book on programming and writing packages is "Programming in Mathematica: Third Edition" by Roman Maeder. But this was written for Version 3 and contains no information on where to put packages. This was quite unsettled at the time. The question of where to put and how to load packages is confusing to most users first writing packages because I don't know of any easily accessible place where it is discussed in the Mathematica documentation. You can also import you package code into Workbench and then write Version 6 style documentation. This is not too difficult either, once you learn the tricks, but the documentation and convenience of Workbench is very poor at the present time. This is a shame because Workbench could be great for writing interactive electronic books, or courseware or doing major research projects that contained notebooks, packages and documentation. But this is a whole different topic. David Park djmpark at comcast.net http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/ From: Francisco Gutierrez [mailto:fgutiers2002 at yahoo.com] Dear list members: a. I made a package and I want to retrieve the functions it has. What I would want is: Command[mypackage] Output: functions for the user contained in myg package How can I do this? Somehow, I have failed to find this in the documentation. b. According to you what are the best references to study the theme of packages in Mathematica? Thanks Francisco