Re: Trying to use Mathematica as "word processor" for my math homework
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- Subject: [mg128519] Re: Trying to use Mathematica as "word processor" for my math homework
- From: mrkhrdr at gmail.com
- Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 23:48:51 -0400 (EDT)
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On Tuesday, November 4, 2003 12:43:34 AM UTC-8, Bob Harris wrote: > Howdy, > > I have recently returned to grad school, and am attempting to use > mathematica as my "word processor" for my math-related homework. There are > a few annoying things that keep happening to my attempts at this, and I > thought I'd describe them here in hopes that someone would have some better > suggestions. > > For an example of what I've been doing, see > http://www.cse.psu.edu/~rsharris/spamlog/ExampleHW.nb > > My motivations are (a) it will give me a clean output that will be easier on > the grader's eyes, (b) it will make it easier for me to edit changes to > equations, etc., and (c) I can include mathematica-generated plots and > import drawings from other packages. > > I've been doing this with some success from the beginning of the fall > semester. I'm not incredibly sophistocated with mathematica, but have > managed to do this using only InputForm and StandardForm cells (i.e. I have > set the cells to DisplayAs one of those two forms, depending on whether the > cell contains running text or equations). This sort of works, but there are > many shortcomings: > > 1) Mathematica likes to auto format things, so it is difficult for me to get > things to line up the way I want them to. This has made the inclusion of > mathematical symbology in my running text difficult. I think I have > discovered that displaying a cell as Text rather than InputForm is better, > but haven't tried it much yet. > > 2) In many cases when I include a plot, or an imported drawing, when I print > out the notebook I get an unnecessary page feed before and/or after the > plot/drawing. > > 3) Font sizes on the printout don't seem to correlate with font sizes on the > screen. The default size of 12 pt is fine to read on the screen, but is too > small on the printed page. Very surprisingly, it is not as large on paper > as wehen I use 12 pt fonts in other programs. > > 4) Trying to set font sizes on things seems like a nightmare of hard to > comprehend results. E.g. slecting a cell and setting the font size many > times seems to have no effect whatsoever. > > 5) ... others ... > > I've also looked at style sheets a little bit. Like I said, I'm not very > mathematica-sophistocated, and am trying to find a fairly quick solution > that I can implement without having to dig *too* deep (am willing to dig > some, but don't really have the time with my current class and teaching load > to spend a lot of time with this). > > It seems like what I'm after is the same sort of set up that someone writing > a paper for publicatiojn would need. Have looked for such examples, but > have not found any. > > Thanks for any help or suggestions, > Bob Harris I recall using palettes in a very simple way in v.6. I can't remember if I clicked on a symbol or pasted it into my text. But when I tried these in my v.8 Mathematica, nothing happened! I have only used Basic Typesetting in a teChem) problems. But I'm hardly a beginner, just a little rusty. So... How do I enter a symbol from a palette into text cells? No, I don't want to use special keyboard combinations, which is one direction the docs take me when I look for typesetting. BTW: There seems to be ABSOLUTELY no help with this issue in the Documentation centers. Although, I see entries promising such information, they lead me on a goose chase every time. There was a video in there somewhere, but it froze and couldn't be restarted after I paused it once. Is there something obvious I'm missing here? I'm running Windows 7, 64-bit on a Core-2 Duo machine with 4GB RAM. Mark