Re: Re: Comment display style?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg94020] Re: [mg93996] Re: [mg93926] Comment display style?
- From: John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com>
- Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 00:41:54 -0500 (EST)
- Reply-to: jfultz at wolfram.com
On Mon, 1 Dec 2008 07:01:58 -0500 (EST), Virgil Stokes wrote:
> Virgil Stokes wrote:
>
>> Suppose I have the following Mathematica input expression, (please try
>> Unicode (UTF-8) character encoding if this expression is displayed with
>> some strange characters in it).
>>
>> =CE=94b={=CE=B4,0,0,0}; (* Perturb b1 *)
>>
>> How do I change the style of the comment so that it will display as b
>> subscripted with 1?. That is, equivalent to $b_1$ in a LaTeX document.
>>
>> In general, I would like to be able to have more control of how
>> individual characters are displayed in a comment.
>>
>> Note, I am using vers. 5.2 of Mathematica.
>>
>> --V. Stokes
>>
>>
> Follow-up on this problem that I was having. There seems to be at least
> two solutions to the problem:
>
> 1) In a cell of style "text" enter the mathematical expression as
> desired and include this within the comment delimiters "(*" and "*)",
> then cut-and-paste this comment to the appropriate place in a style
> "input" cell.
> 2) While within a comment of a style "input" cell select Cell from the
> task bar -> Convert to StandardForm, and then enter the mathematical
> expression desired (as suggested by Szabolcs Horv=C3=A1t). Of course if one
> is already in StandardForm this convert step is unnecessary.
>
> --V. Stokes
Okay...I think this explains why everybody was so confused by your question. It
sounds like the default format type you're using for input cells is InputForm
(or maybe Raw InputForm), whereas the system default and what most Mathematica
users use is StandardForm. This is set in Edit->Preferences... in the
Evaluation tab.
StandardForm cells can be slower for editing very large bodies of code, but they
have many features not in other kinds of cells. This includes syntax
highlighting which many people find very useful. If you switched to InputForm
because you've had bad experiences with bugs in the past, you may wish to
reconsider; a large number of such bugs were fixed for version 6, and even more
in version 7.
Raw InputForm cells disallow any usage of typesetting, and the fact that the
copy/paste method you suggest works is technically a bug (but not one I'd get
very worked up about).
Sincerely,
John Fultz
jfultz at wolfram.com
User Interface Group
Wolfram Research, Inc.