Re: Customizing Manipulate's Autorun
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg110663] Re: Customizing Manipulate's Autorun
- From: "Ingolf Dahl" <ingolf.dahl at telia.com>
- Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2010 08:26:50 -0400 (EDT)
Here is a second comment on John Fultz's comments on my letter: > From: John Fultz [mailto:jfultz at wolfram.com] > snip > Second, there is a much easier technique for making a hidden control. > Manipulate supports this directly using the ControlType option. E.g., > > Control[{{t, 0}, 0, 4*Pi, Pi/12, ControlType -> None}] > > There are several examples in the Manipulate documentation which highlight this > usage. > > Sincerely, > > John Fultz When I read this, I thought I must have missed something in the documentation. So I became a little bit finicky and checked the documentation. This is what I have found, relating Control and ControlType: On the "Control Objects" page: " Control -- an interactive control with type automatically chosen", and ControlType is not mentioned. On the " Controls Options" page: ControlType is not mentioned. On the "Control" page, "opts" is mentioned as a possible argument with the comment " use the specified control options". But then no possible option are specified or used in the examples. On the "ControlType" page: "ControlType is an option for Manipulate and related functions that specifies what type of controls should be displayed". Please be specific and tell the names of the "related functions"! It is not easy to understand that Control is a related function, while Manipulator is not. Or can ControlType be given as option to Manipulator? In the "Introduction to Manipulate" and the "Advanced Manipulate Functionality": Neither Control nor ControlType is mentioned, as far as I have found when I scanned through. Have I missed some place? Finally, at the "Manipulate" page, both Control and ControlType are mentioned, and it is stated "ControlType options can be given separately for each variable. Options for the controls can also be given within the specification for the variables." This was what I missed. It is not explicitly stated, but I guess that it is so, that the argument of Control should have the same form as the specification of a variable for Manipulate. A variable for Manipulate is considered as an variable for Manipulate even if it is wrapped by a Control statement. Are there any examples of Manipulate using Control as argument? Control has also an own life outside Manipulate, but then ControlType->None does not seem to be an option. So I do not think I am unfair if I describe the use of Control with the option ControlType->None as an "undocumented, or poorly documented feature". One thing that might be clarified is what the difference is between the setting {{u,0}, None} and {{u,0}, ControlType->None} or setting u = 0 in the Initialization option. Ingolf Dahl