Re: Stacked fractions
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg120094] Re: Stacked fractions
- From: Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 04:52:38 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <iv46co$fc2$1@smc.vnet.net>
On 7/7/2011 4:47 AM, paulvonhippel at yahoo wrote:
> Another question, along the same lines. Some of the solutions
> Mathematica gives me include compound fractions of the form ((A/B)-C)/
> D. Again it seems to me most authors would rewrite this as a simpler
> fraction -- can I get Mathematica to do the same?
>
> Where these questions are coming from: Mathematica is now compatible
> with Word's equation editor, so it's become more desirable for
> Mathematica's output to look close to what's conventional in a paper.
>
While it may be possible to get Mathematica to generate exactly the
displays that you want in each of the particular situations by dint of
some hackery, you will never be able to anticipate ALL such difference
between a human's preference and the computer-generated simplified form.
If you want a particular ordering (etc) of terms for a document, I
suggest you learn how to use the editor (for you, Word's equation
editor, I guess), to move things around, change fonts, etc.
You can try to thwart Mathematica's notions of evaluation,
simplification, display, but it is like teaching a pig to sing.
{=93Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys
the pig.=94 (Robert Heinlein)}