Re: CreateCellID
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg119300] Re: CreateCellID
- From: John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com>
- Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 07:38:47 -0400 (EDT)
On Wed, 25 May 2011 19:31:28 -0400 (EDT), Wolfgang Windsteiger wrote: > Dear group, > > the CellOption "CellID" is still undocumented, thus unsafe whether it > will survive future design decisions. > > Does anybody have a "feeling", how high the chances are that this very > useful feature might become documented and thus permanent? > > The CellID is "unique", I assume "unique within one notebook" (at least, > this would sound reasonable for me). Or is it even "unique within all > open notebooks". Does anyone know how I should interpret "unique"? > > Thank you, > WW. Whether or not it becomes documented, I think the existing functionality is unlikely to change in any significant way, as our documentation system relies on the existing functionality. Yes, you are correct...CellID is unique within a given notebook. One of the important properties of a CellID is that it's saved with the notebook and the ID for a given cell will never, ever be changed by any automatic operation. This allows a stable target for operations such as hyperlinking. Since ID stability is an important feature, we couldn't make it unique among a collection of open notebooks unless it were a genuinely globally unique identifier (e.g., look up GUID in Wikipedia). Sincerely, John Fultz jfultz at wolfram.com User Interface Group Wolfram Research, Inc.