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Re: How to change the directory for the docs?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg115203] Re: How to change the directory for the docs?
  • From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
  • Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 04:25:22 -0500 (EST)

On 1/3/11 at 3:57 AM, no.email at please.post (kj) wrote:

>In <ifpk99$bso$1 at smc.vnet.net> David Bailey
><dave at removedbailey.co.uk> writes:
>
>>It might help to explain why you want to do this. There is probably
>>an easier way to achieve whatever it is you want to do.

>Well, if you want to know, I've copied all the Mathematica
>documentation notebooks to a personal directory, so that I can
>modify them at will.  The ultimate goal is to supplement these
>notebooks with important information that they lack, and to fix
>factual errors in them.  I want all the built-in Mathematica help
>facilities to point to these annotated notebooks rather than to the
>"official" ones.

Assuming you are using a Mac or another Unix based system, it
should not be difficult to move the notebook files making up the
documentation to another directory and still have Mathematica
access them normally. On my Mac, I would do this by dragging the
directory with the documentation notebooks to whatever directory
I wanted and replacing that with a symlink to the new location.
 From Mathematica's perspective, things should behave exactly
the same as if the documentation notebooks had never been moved.

Note, I've not tested this nor do I intend to. Also, I suspect
that while the files would be moved your end goal would not be
achieved by this arrangement. That is, I am assuming you want to
use Mathematica itself to modify the notebooks and save the
result. If so, the real issue isn't where the notebooks are
located but the fact the documentation notebooks have their File
Option Saveable set to False.

So, if I correctly understand your end goal you should be able
to modify any of the documentation notebooks by opening up the
notebook you want changed, using the Options Inspector to change
the notebook properties of that notebook appropriately, editing
as desired and then saving the result. Simply copying the
notebooks to another directory prior to doing this will give you
a backup copy of the original notebook should you want to undo
anything you have done.



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