Re: New Wolfram Tutorial Collection documentation is ready
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg99692] Re: New Wolfram Tutorial Collection documentation is ready
- From: Bob F <deepyogurt at gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 06:25:21 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <gu3arb$t79$1@smc.vnet.net>
On May 9, 1:20 am, John Fultz <jfu... at wolfram.com> wrote:
> A followup to an earlier post of mine (snipping the irrelevant bits out). ..
>
>
>
> On Sat, 2 May 2009 11:36:22 -0500, John Fultz wrote:
> > On Sat, 2 May 2009 05:55:57 -0400 (EDT), Bob F wrote:
>
> >> 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.
>
> :
> :>> -Bob
>
> > Thanks for the various remarks.
>
> :
> :> Concerning copy/paste, this is due to the fact that the PDF focuses on
> > being a high-fidelity visual representation of the in-product
> > documentation. Since inputs can contain typesetting, non-ASCII
> > characters, etc., no attempt was made to convert them to an InputForm
> > equivalent. So these are StandardForm cells which, among other things,
> > use Mathematica fonts to represent characters such as square brackets.
> > I.e., the content of the PDF is exactly as Mathematica would display it
> > on-screen or print it to the printer. And, as you say, we do have the
> > in-product Virtual Book if you're looking for interactivity with
> > Mathematica.
>
> :
> :
>
> > John Fultz
> > jfu... at wolfram.com
> > User Interface Group
> > Wolfram Research, Inc.
>
> In the interest of making sure the information out there is correct, let me
> follow up on this and point out that, under Windows, if you copy from Adobe
> Acrobat Reader and paste directly in Mathematica, it *does* work just fine.
>
> I'm guessing that the reports of this not working are coming from Macintosh
> users (correct me if I'm wrong), and I wouldn't expect this to work under Linux,
> either. The reason this works under Windows is pretty technical, but it
> basically has to do with how Reader and Mathematica interact with each other on
> the clipboard (*). Note that a similar issue would be observed under Windows,
> too, if you copied from the PDFs and pasted to Notepad.
>
> The reason for the system dependency is because we're relying on features of the
> system clipboard, which vary from one operating system to another. And none of
> this here negates the suggestion that we should look into making copy/paste work
> better on Mac, which I'm discussing with the documentation production group.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> John Fultz
> jfu... at wolfram.com
> User Interface Group
> Wolfram Research, Inc.
>
> (*) A slightly self-serving footnote. A little embarrassingly, I implemented
> the feature which made this work, and yet it never occurred to me that it would
> kick in with pleasant consequences here until I tried it. The lesson is that
> software systems (of all kinds, but certainly including Mathematica) are really
> complex, and sometimes in ways that even surprise their creators.
I'm a bit confused -- first you say that it can't work because of the
complexities with making sure that things "look" right (see post #18
in this thread). Now you say (in post #20 in this thread) it works on
Windows but not Mac's. Are you talking about the same thing? What
generated the PDF file you are doing the copying (was it a Mathematica
generated PDF or ???)?
So are you saying that this copy/paste will generally work when doing
it on a Windows system, no matter the complexity of the input
expression, or ??? And likewise that it will never work on a Mac?
If it depends on the complexity of the expression, can you make any
statements like "if you avoid using the symbol "xxx" (fill xxx in with
the symbols that apply -- perhaps xxx is an empty set) this copy/paste
will generally work with PDF files generated by Mathematica on Windows
when pasting back into Mathematica" or that Mac's "copy/paste will
almost never work on a Mac OS X system from a PDF file generated with
Mathematica back into Mathematica". What if I took the PDF file that
was created on a Mac version of Mathematica and put it on a Windows
system, would Mathematica on Windows handle it correctly?
This is getting murkier and murkier ;-) Is this considered a bug and
is being worked on for the Mac OS X version of Mathematica?
Thanks....
-Bob
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