Re: Notebook Format History?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg126675] Re: Notebook Format History?
- From: John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com>
- Date: Wed, 30 May 2012 04:11:47 -0400 (EDT)
- Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
- Reply-to: jfultz at wolfram.com
On Tue, 29 May 2012 05:47:52 -0400 (EDT), JCW wrote: > Please forgive my dragging up ancient history: I have been using > Mathematica > from version 2.2 through 7.0. I remember at least one (maybe two?) format > conversions that were necessary to update old notebooks to the newer > formats. I also remember at least one batch-notebook-conversion command. > Unfortunately I cannot remember the details: > > 1) Between which versions did these format changes occur? (I'm pretty > sure there was one from the vs. 2.2 x.ma and x.mb format to the newer > x.nb format. Was there another format change within x.nb versions?) > > 2) What was the name of the batch converter (or converters) mentioned > above? (I know I have it in my archives, but it's difficult to find > without a name!) > > Thanks in advance for any help! I'm always one for ancient history. There was only the one switch from 2.2 .ma/.mb files to 3.0 .nb files. Possibly, you might be remembering v6 when pre-v6 notebooks were opened with an compatibility tool added to the top, but the tool had nothing to do with the file format...it was merely an aid to updating some of the code inside the notebook. Also, .nb files are not wholly backward compatible. They'll always open in older versions, but as new features get added to Mathematica, inputs/outputs depending upon those features may not render or function correctly in older versions. The most radical such change would be in v6, when we switched from using PostScript for graphics to more native constructs in the notebooks. Which means that pretty much any v6 or later notebook is going to produce graphics which are wholly unusable by v5 or earlier (but the notebooks *do* open, and textual content comes through just fine). The converter for .ma->.nb is Developer`NotebookConvert. It's still documented in the latest shipping Mathematica. Sincerely, John Fultz jfultz at wolfram.com User Interface Group Wolfram Research, Inc.