Wolfram Mathematica

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8:58 PM

Welcome to chat for: Mathematica

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Where you can play with chat features (except flagging) and ch...

3

and remember; please read the FAQ ;p)

Szabolcs

9:11 PM

Good evening everyone, and happy launch day!

acl

Hi @Szabolcs

here?

Szabolcs

Hi @acl!

acl

@Szabolcs so, we're all back at 101 reputation points!

brilliant

Szabolcs

Yep, but thresholds are much lower here

Verbeia

Yay! Hello everyone

Szabolcs

9:29 PM

Hi @Scott :-) congrats on the first answer!

rcollyer

I won't be around much until later. But, hi everyone!

Heike

Hi everyone.

J. M.

At last...

rcollyer

Would someone remember to invite Belisarius?

acl

so, if I edit something, it is placed in a queue until peer-reviewed. who reviews it, since we all have low reps?

J. M.

9:36 PM

@acl Ideally, there'll be a diamond user (in this case an SE employee) holding our collective hands up until pro tempore mods are chosen.

acl

@JM OK I see, thanks

J. M.

I wonder if we'll need MathJax to be enabled here...

yoda

yup... they usually approve all edits (that are easy to understand, like highlighting/typo fixes), etc

Verbeia

@JM maybe ask on meta?

J. M.

@Verbeia Right; I'll do so now.

yoda

9:37 PM

@JM rcollyer already got to it

Verbeia

@rcollyer who has his email?

Sjoerd C. de Vries

Hi folks!

Just sent mr.wizard the email

J. M.

@yoda Didn't show up at once. I've upvoted his query.

Szabolcs

@JM Thanks for the references about the crystallographic Fourier transform today. Please don't spend too much time on it, as it's for a friend, and I am not sure if he will actually implement it or not. But I found the question interesting too

J. M.

@Szabolcs No worries. :) I won't be working on it at once, since I'm juggling other things, but I will get back to it. I do think it's terribly interesting...

That thing highlights the importance of proper keywords though. So far as I can tell you didn't see much until I mentioned the magic words...

Verbeia

9:46 PM

45 users have already signed up to the beta.

J. M.

Questions on older versions are of course welcome, yes? I'm guessing we'll need special tags for those.

(The Ubuntu site has tags for each Ubuntu version, for instance.)

yoda

@JM yes, we'll probably have those when the questions get asked

Sjoerd C. de Vries

Should we post the sample questions from the definition phase? The good ones I mean...

yoda

@JM We've been doing some brainstorming over the past few days on appropriate tagging, now that we can't shove everything under a single "mathematica" tag ;)

J. M.

@SjoerdCdeVries I'm about to post one now...

Sjoerd C. de Vries

9:49 PM

@JM OK, I'll do the same

J. M.

Apparently we do have MathJax already...

acl

OK, so how do I use MathJax? And can we not ask for LaTeX support?

Verbeia

@acl it basically is LaTeX, or a subset of it.

J. M.

@acl MathJax is what SE sites use to render LaTeX.

Here is a list of supported LaTeX entities in MathJax.

Just enclose your LaTeX stuff in single ( $\frac1{x}$ ) or double ($$\sum_{k=1}^n \frac1{k}$$) dollar signs, as the case may be...

acl

@J.M aha, thanks!

Rolf Mertig

10:00 PM

Hi all. Shouldn't there be more than just questions and answers here? I would like to start some kind of developer-centered wiki (e.g., how to use which code versioning system with Eclipse for Mathematica development, better documentation than what is given to us, etc.).

J. M.

@RolfMertig No problem. Ask it as a question, and you can answer it yourself after a certain time period.

(as the SE overlords say, think of it as Jeopardy!...)

Rolf Mertig

@J.M. Well, o.k., but that is not the same, as, say en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Mathematica (which is probably not perfect either).

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@JM What would be the advantage of using LaTeX to post equations instead of posting it as bitmaps? I presume scaling might be it...

J. M.

@Sjoerd: That's one. Picture sizes are fixed. MathJax at least, you can adjust how big or how small you're seeing things...

Try right-clicking on the LaTeX bits in this query and play around with the options to see what I mean.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@JM I haven't used LaTex since I wrote my doctoral thesis 18 years ago :-( I'm quite rusty now

J. M.

10:09 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries Don't worry. You eventually pick it up. :) If you want to see how things are done, pick "Show Source" when right-clicking on them...

acl

@Sjoerd using LaTeX doesn't interrupt the flow of one's typing, (at least for those using it the whole time)

Sjoerd C. de Vries

I'm quite fond of typesetting in Mathematica nowadays

We don't have LaTeXForm, do we? Only TeXForm

J. M.

Oh, the typesetting certainly has gotten much better, starting from version 3.

acl

@Sjoerd well, I tried a for quite a bit of time and wrote tens of pages of notes. It doesn't export very well to LaTeX, which I need, I couldn't work out how to number equations and refer to them, etc

TeXForm works very well (at least for what I use it, maybe for more sophisticated stuff it doesn't work)

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@acl numbering in Mathematica you mean, or after copying to LaTeX?

But you can't use TeX in LaTeX, can you?

acl

10:13 PM

in mma

J. M.

@SjoerdCdeVries You can; the former's a subset of the latter.

acl

well, I think you can use TeX. But in any case, I doubt that here we will have to distinguish between LaTeX and TeX

(as in, I did use TeX for low-level things a few times, but it's not the sort of thing I know much about, so may be wrong)

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@JM I know LaTeX is derived from TeX, but I seem to recall from times when dragons still roamed the earth that mixing TeX in LaTeX files didn't work

yoda

my beef with TeXform is that it doesn't order it the way I normally like (of course, I can always tell it how I want it), and moving around things get a lot more messy once it's in latex

J. M.

@SjoerdCdeVries Oh, there are those little bits, now that I remember it. I'm told they've been ironed out though.

David Zaslavsky

10:17 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries It's probably easier to accidentally break something when using plain TeX in LaTeX, but you can do it

yoda

@SjoerdCdeVries I believe that's the case still. Heh, everytime I go to tex.se, I see advice that's completely opposite to what I usually do; yet life goes on as usual ;)

J. M.

Yeah, TeXForm[] doesn't look that smart. I always find that I have to tweak something.

yoda

I guess that's how I think of mathematicians too when I use a lot of terminologies rather loosely

J. M.

"I see advice that's completely opposite to what I usually do; yet life goes on as usual ;)" - I'd add that that probably applies to Mathematica too... :)

Sjoerd C. de Vries

OK. I'll give it a try once I get time to set things up. Any advice on a good free LaTeX/Tex distribution?

yoda

10:19 PM

what OS? Mac?

acl

TeXLive

yoda

Look no further

acl

@Sjoerd you may also enjoy experimenting with LyX

yoda

noooooooo

Sjoerd C. de Vries

PC

@acl Lyx?

J. M.

10:21 PM

@yoda That's Darth, not Yoda. ;)

acl

@Sjoerd lyx.org

Verbeia

@SjoerdCdeVries At work (Windows) I use MikTeX with WinEdt as the editor. It's ok, and I like the line-wrapping better than the way TeXShop on the Mac does it.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@acl It's a visualfront end on TeX/LaTeX?

acl

uses LaTeX, but more visual. Not a frontend in that it has its own file format, it does not just display TeX compiled. I use it to write my notes (writing long equations in LaTeX without errors is beyond my intellectual abilities)

for a visual frontend to normal LaTeX files, emacs with auctex is the best in that it may be set to display equations compiled (also images)

but, it's still emacs

Sjoerd C. de Vries

I remember my shock after finishing my PhD I got my first job and had to write in Word instead of LaTeX. I got quite emotional about that

Actually, come to think of it, it was Wordperfect first

which we called word pervert

emacs == brushed up vi??

J. M.

10:27 PM

@SjoerdCdeVries Uh-oh... that's one way to trigger a religious war... :D

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@JM people are quite zealous about there typesetting choices...

J. M.

Precisely.

acl

@Sjoerd en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war

I haven't used vi much, but it doesn't feel like emacs

Sjoerd C. de Vries

I have used vi for a couple of years but I hated every minute. I'm a mouse man and definitely do not like a separate command and edit mode. Always got mode confusion.

acl

well emacs does not have modes like that, but if you like mice you won't like emacs :)

and you'll like LyX

Sjoerd C. de Vries

10:35 PM

@acl I'm going to download it. Have to go now. My significant other is calling for attention. Bye, and have fun on the new site! Darn, haven't posted a question yet and answered none.

acl

@Sjoerd see you

rcollyer

10:48 PM

@Verbeia He had it in his profile. I sent it out just a moment ago.

yoda

eyyy... did someone start a vi vs emacs conversation and it didn't lead to a flame war??

5

you guys suck

J. M.

:D

yoda

I love how the last message in the old room is a link to this room and no one has spoken since.

J. M.

We have new digs; make the most out of it, right?

Szabolcs

@yoda How can I bring over those synonyms?

yoda

11:01 PM

@Szabolcs post a question in meta and say that we've been doing this brainstorming over the past weeks and that we should discuss

Link to the readonly copy of the pastebin (although, those who know where to look, can find the direct link)

Szabolcs

Alright

I think I should only do that in the morning

it's 1 AM and I'm afraid I'm not too sharp now

yoda

@Szabolcs yeah, whenever. I asked you to, since it's only fair that you get the credit for the brainstorming idea

Szabolcs

:-)

@RolfMertig @RolfMertig I agree that it'd be good to have more collaboration eventually. After all this is a community, not just a website. But first things first: let's get the site going before doing anything else. It's also good to reuse existing projects such as mathematica-users.org

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