Re: What is the point of having Initializations in DynamicModule and Manipulate?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg123137] Re: What is the point of having Initializations in DynamicModule and Manipulate?
- From: Armand Tamzarian <mike.honeychurch at gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 06:57:28 -0500 (EST)
- Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
- References: <398831.35647.1321702630679.JavaMail.root@m06> <008c01cca6e3$cf88ae50$6e9a0af0$@net>
On Nov 23, 11:08 pm, Andrzej Kozlowski <a... at mimuw.edu.pl> wrote: > On 22 Nov 2011, at 11:32, David Park wrote: > > > But isn't it all very complicated and unintuitive? This basically arises > > because WRI wanted a set-piece Manipulate statement that would do just about > > everything for standalone dynamic displays. I just about never use the > > Manipulate statement. It takes more than a Manipulate statement to present a > > significant idea. One has the feeling that the Initialization option was > > added as an afterthought to make Manipulate work on some additional cases. > > Then this was carried over to DynamicModule. > > Let me just say that I entirely disagree. I only use Manipulate and it allows me to illustrate all kinds of advanced mathematics, including genuinely "bleeding edge" research (look at the Wolfram Demosntrations site and you will see some of it). I think it involves a lot of "significant ideas" and yet I have never come across any situation where I would want to use Dynamic (and DynamicModule). Furthermore, we have started teaching Mathematica here both in the context of general computer algebra and also for specific applications (including quite advanced applications in mathematical finance). We tell the students about Dynamic and show them a fee examples but then we only use Manipulate. If they want to know about Dynamic they are told to learn more by themselves. We have really top class students here, both in math and computer science but so far I have not yet met anyone who would find Manipulate insufficient - and they have created some quite spectacular projects with i t! . > > Andrzej Kozlowski There probably aren't many limits to functionality you can have in Manipulate but the layout is constrained whereas with DynamicModule you can pretty much build whatever you want and make it look like whatever you want. The best examples of this, that are accessible to all, are the Wolfram CDF examples pack (I presume this is still downloadable somewhere). These aren't Manipulates. And while on CDF there is at least one thing that Manipulate can't currently do because of a bug but DynamicModule can do (ClickPane) but there may be others. Mike