Re: Managing your notebooks
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg118048] Re: Managing your notebooks
- From: David Bailey <dave at removedbailey.co.uk>
- Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2011 18:00:05 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <inpesv$8tp$1@smc.vnet.net>
On 09/04/2011 12:11, Jason Quinn wrote: > I was curious if anybody would be willing to share there strategy for > managing their Mathematica notebook versions. > > In my experience, Mathematica notebooks are "fragile" because running > the code is not cleanly separated from using the code. Notebooks > indicate modification after a cell is run even if no changes to the > code were made. In practice, after using a notebook for a while, it's > easy to forget if changes were actually made that you would want to > keep, so when you are prompted to save a notebook, you are left with a > dilemma. Staying safe, you save again and again which leads to a > proliferation of versions. > > I am aware you can make cells edit protected but this doesn't solve > the problem. I also know about the "Notebook history" feature, which > seems to be of very limited value. I always end up with so many > "versions" of my notebooks that I forget what the differences between > them are. > > I can't help but feel that I'm missing something. I have no problems > managing compiled code or interpreted scripts but notebooks are much > more challenging. Is this something you experience as well. Have you > too noticed extra difficulty managing your mathematica notebooks? > > Comments? Suggestions? > Jason > I develop code mostly in package (.m) files. These can be formatted very much like notebooks (but with a few restrictions) - they can contain headings, and text cells - all encoded as comments in the .m file on disk. You can execute cells in a .m file, and obtain output cells, which are not stored to disk, so the front end does not consider such files to be modified each time something is executed. If I really want to save some output, I use a notebook. I normally back up fairly frequently, and I have a command, outside of Mathematica that will copy a file to a special location with a unique index number. Thus, when I need to save a .m file, I simply overwrite what is there already, safe in the knowledge that I can't do much damage even in the worst case! David Bailey http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk