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Re: New Wolfram Tutorial Collection documentation is ready

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg99284] Re: New Wolfram Tutorial Collection documentation is ready
  • From: Bob F <deepyogurt at gmail.com>
  • Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 05:55:57 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <gtbunt$2qn$1@smc.vnet.net>

On Apr 30, 4:32 am, Bob F <deepyog... at gmail.com> wrote:
> I got e-mail today from Wolfram saying that the new "Tutorial
> Collection" documents are ready for downloading of the PDF or HTML
> files, or purchase of the hardcopy. There are 23 volumes that take up
> about 354 MB if you downloaded them all (about 3668 pages according to
> Wolfram). I wonder if these are readable by any of the e-book readers
> like Kindle or the Sony or ??? If anyone knows please let us know ...
> I am sure this will be exciting nighttime reading ;-) You could buy a
> Kindle for the cost of these books. But will it or the Sony show them
> correctly??
>
> -Bob
>
> ps -- the URL for these is http://www.wolfram.com/learningcenter/tutorial=
collection/
> and apparently there are a few volumes that are not finished or they
> are out of stock, so if you want the printed volumes the website for
> purchasing them said there may be a 2-3 week delay for the few volumes
> that fall into this category (see http://store.wolfram.com/view/book/tuto=
rial/?Qualifier=COMM&check=ISB...
> ) Also note that the hardcopy books are printed in black & white (not
> color like the PDF and HTML versions are).

I looked at one of the files (Visualization & Graphics) also, and
tried to do some copy/paste from both Acrobat and Preview on a Mac,
into Mathematica and it doesn't work very well. A simple line that
says in the PDF file:

Plot[Cos[x], {x,-Pi,Pi}]

comes out like this when pasted into some other program like this
Safari browser window)

Plot@Cos@xD, 8x, -Pi, Pi<D

and when copied from Mathematica Virtual Book comes out fine and is
pasted as:

Plot[Cos[x], {x, -Pi, Pi}]

so these files don't seem to be real useful if you want to extract
code examples. This seems rather weird as these are all normal ASCII
characters. So the Documentation Center & Virtual Book windows in
Mathematica are looking a like the way to go if you wish to do any
copying and pasting of code examples.

Also it does appear that these PDF files follow the same structure of
the Virtual Book from what little I did to compare, except that the
"How To" section is completely missing from the Visualization &
Graphics PDF volume I looked at.

In doing a little proofreading, I did notice a graphics that didn't
come out correctly in the PDF that is fine in the Virtual Book -- see
page 14 in the same "Visualization & Graphics" PDF volume -- the file
I am looking at does not show the curve, only the axis (this is the
plot right above the "Manipulating Options" title) that shows the
effect of modifying the PlotRange on the plot of the Cos curve just
above:

Show[%, PlotRange -> {{0, .005}, {.99999, 1}}]

So be careful of trusting these PDF files to have everything they
should.

I also tried Thomas M=FCnch's trick with removing the metadata on the
same Visualization & Graphics volume and it went from 138 MB to 28.1
MB on my Mac and also did not notice any differences in the few pages
that I compared side by side. I wonder if the big difference in the
sizes is due to Mathematica's tendency to not be very good at
optimizing PDF output?

-Bob


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