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Re: package construction

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg117964] Re: package construction
  • From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
  • Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 05:12:30 -0400 (EDT)

On 4/5/11 at 6:45 AM, jackgold at umich.edu (Jack L Goldberg 1) wrote:

>Something puzzles me. (Actually, a lot puzzles me but thats a story
>for my psychologist).  Considering the incredible sophistication of
>Mathematica, why is it so mysteriously hard for a beginner to write
>a package and store it properly so that it can by accessed as easily
>as built-n packages?

It has never seemed difficult to me to create a package. But I
will note, when I first created packages I did not create them
using Mathematica. Instead, I used a separate text editor to
write the code and save the result as a .m file. It was much
later when I transferred those first packages into a notebook
and started maintaining them and creating new packages within Mathematica.

>Has anyone put there mind to develop a template to make this stuff
>automatic.

Roman Maeder wrote a couple of books about creating packages for
Mathematica (Programming In Mathematica and the Mathematica
Programmer). In one of them (Programming in Mathematica I think)
he provides a package template. Note, these books were published
circa 1996-1997. So, the reflect a much earlier version of
Mathematica. But details of how to create a package haven't
changed. The only thing changed is the current front end
provides several features making it more attractive to use
Mathematica as the tool to create packages than it was when
these books were published.

Also, I don't recall whether I had tried to create a package for
myself prior to buying Maeder's books. It is entirely possible I
only did so after buying those books and following Maeder's
guidelines. And that may well be the reason I never found it
difficult to create packages.




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