Re: package construction
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg117975] Re: package construction
- From: "E. Martin-Serrano" <eMartinSerrano at telefonica.net>
- Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2011 08:03:51 -0400 (EDT)
In "Programming in Mathematica" Maeder not only provides the package template (I think that for many years the template was a part of the Mathematica standard shipping, not in V8, I could not find it). In his book, R. Maeder also gave a step by step explanation of what takes place in the contexts structure when a package is loaded. Good to understand the context mechanism. E. Martin-Serrano -----Mensaje original----- De: Bill Rowe [mailto:readnews at sbcglobal.net] Enviado el: mi=E9rcoles, 06 de abril de 2011 11:13 Para: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net Asunto: [mg117964] Re: package construction On 4/5/11 at 6:45 AM, jackgold at umich.edu (Jack L Goldberg 1) wrote: >Something puzzles me. (Actually, a lot puzzles me but thats a story for >my psychologist). Considering the incredible sophistication of >Mathematica, why is it so mysteriously hard for a beginner to write a >package and store it properly so that it can by accessed as easily as >built-n packages? It has never seemed difficult to me to create a package. But I will note, when I first created packages I did not create them using Mathematica. Instead, I used a separate text editor to write the code and save the result as a .m file. It was much later when I transferred those first packages into a notebook and started maintaining them and creating new packages within Mathematica. >Has anyone put there mind to develop a template to make this stuff >automatic. Roman Maeder wrote a couple of books about creating packages for Mathematica (Programming In Mathematica and the Mathematica Programmer). In one of them (Programming in Mathematica I think) he provides a package template. Note, these books were published circa 1996-1997. So, the reflect a much earlier version of Mathematica. But details of how to create a package haven't changed. The only thing changed is the current front end provides several features making it more attractive to use Mathematica as the tool to create packages than it was when these books were published. Also, I don't recall whether I had tried to create a package for myself prior to buying Maeder's books. It is entirely possible I only did so after buying those books and following Maeder's guidelines. And that may well be the reason I never found it difficult to create packages.