Re: Glynn/Gray book for beginners ?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg14936] Re: Glynn/Gray book for beginners ?
- From: paulh (P.J. Hinton)
- Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 03:49:33 -0500
- Organization: Wolfram Research, Inc.
- References: <73i0n5$pje@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
In article <73i0n5$pje at smc.vnet.net>, "Ersek, Ted R" <ErsekTR at navair.navy.mil> writes: |> I have herd from various sources that "The Beginner's Guide to |> Mathematica Version 3" by Glynn/Gray covers use of the Option |> Inspector, programming Buttons, and programming the Front End. |> |> The topics I list above are new to Version 3.0, and users beyond the |> beginner level (as I consider myself) would also be interested. |> |> My question is whether this book only scratches the surface of these |> subjects, and is only useful to beginners? Any other remarks on this |> book are also welcome. Most of the front end material in the book you mention is only sampler material for getting started, but there are some portions that go a long way in clarifying things that probably baffle beginning users. These are also things that are not really addressed in _The Mathematica Book_ (Third Edition). Among the things that I found to be useful were: o Some paragraphs devoted to explaining that some properties of cell styles are influenced by the default format type associated with the style. That accounts for why the font family for Input style cells is controlled by adjusting the FontFamily option on StandardForm rather than for Input. o The ability to use URLs as ButtonData for Hyperlink style buttons, so that you can create links that open webpages or invoke open a mail message composition window. o A clarification of why Mathematica 3.0 uses separate enviornments for presenting content on screen and on hardcopy (screen style environment and printing style environment). o The ever useful Chapter 56, which contains the most exhaustive listing of front end commands and tokens that one can use to manipulate the front end. This chapter contains information that you can find almost nowhere else in print.. If you want some information on programming buttons, you can give my button box howto tutorial on MathSource a try sometime. There is also a tutorial on using counter boxes. The item numbers are 0209-809 and 0209-821 respectively. -- P.J. Hinton Mathematica Programming Group paulh at wolfram.com Wolfram Research, Inc. http://www.wolfram.com/~paulh/ Disclaimer: Opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone.