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acl
acl
12:25 AM
@RM what are you trying to do?
R.M
R.M
12:45 AM
@acl I use a custom syntax highlighting scheme and set mine in $BaseDirectory/FrontEnd/init.m. I'd like to name the colors in one place and reuse them instead of writing option -> RGBColor[x, y, z] each time... I'm not good at imagining what the RGB triplet color looks like
acl
acl
@RM why not do it via the Preferences? so you can transport it to different machines? and, can the whole scheme not be set from the kernel's init.m? (I've never done it and am too lazy to check)
R.M
R.M
@acl well, the preferences only change the $UserBaseDirectory/FE/init.m file, which also stores a bunch of other crud over time... I wanted a base customization file that I can save and version and use in other machines. I thought of using the kernel's init.m, but wouldn't that reset temporary changes to $FrontEndSession when I restart the kernel? I'll admit, I haven't tried it though...
an alternate is using stylesheets, but I don't know how (yet)... I'm now poking around to see if I can set the syntax highlighting using stylesheets instead of init.m
I only control the fonts, intending, borders and other stuff with the stylesheet
@rcollyer Looks like you'll overtake me this week in votes cast :)
1:16 AM
@RM yep, you and me are the primary drivers of our economy. :)
acl
acl
1:27 AM
@RM right, I see. can't help I'm afraid, I never did do much customisation of that aspect of mma
@rcollyer at least our economy here is functioning, unlike some others I could name :)
R.M
R.M
heh
austerity measurements... cut back on voting!
acl
acl
@RM yes, that didn't go very well did it
luckily I'm not greek...
(but greek-cypriot, a fine distinction but important in this context!)
R.M
R.M
perhaps one of the few contexts it's important?
acl
acl
@RM well, it's complicated
but in any case, it means that in "my" parliament, there are not yet neo-nazis
as for the economic aspect, if the greeks fail (and they will) I guess we're following as the exposure of our banks is huge
R.M
R.M
ah
acl
acl
1:35 AM
@RM (frantically googling cyprus are we? :) )
R.M
R.M
@acl no, actually I was playing around with Istvan's new question
acl
acl
@RM much more sensible:) unfortunately I've been too busy with work to play with any interesting questions recently
and am plunging down the scoreboard!
R.M
R.M
yeah, work can be a bummer. Might relax for a couple of days now as I'm just about to submit a paper (today or worst case tomorrow)
I guess if I were not in grad school, I'd have like 6-10 other half-finished papers to focus on...
acl
acl
@RM that's exactly my situation
not good for one's peace of mind. there's always something to do
I guess (time) management skills are more important than I thought when I was a student...
R.M
R.M
Very true.
acl
acl
1:44 AM
one advantage of being a grad student, though, is that you're inevitably the main author, so that it's up to you to finish everything. you don't depend on collaborators who might slow things down, be left by their girlfriends, experience arbitrary crises etc
R.M
R.M
@acl uh oh. Never thought of those scenarios... I guess it's just the reality of life catching up. Grad school is, in many ways, a sheltered place.
acl
acl
@RM "the reality of life catching up" is exactly right...
@RM by the way, I recently rewrote a large(ish) project I had in mma in matlab, in the hope of speeding it up. unfortunately, it was actually slower....
I believe this is due to my inexperience with matlab, at least to some extend, but I think it shows that using tools you know well is better than using tools you don't know so well but may be potentially faster. I'll stick to mma, mma with C or pure C from now on (probably pure mma to be honest)
another conclusion is that NDSolve is pretty good
R.M
R.M
@acl That's unfortunate... could be because of inexperience too. But I fully agree with using the tools you know well
@acl :)
R.M
R.M
1:59 AM
@acl Yeah, I fully agree with that. Although I've felt that as a beginner, MATLAB forces you to know a bit about your DEs before you can even use it (which is a good thing!)... your choice of ode23/ode45, etc depends on that. On the other hand, NDSolve is more powerful and in general, fits in well with rest of mma (i.e., you can move to the next plotting/exploration step seamlessly)
@Szabolcs, @balpha: I found the bug. Some strange things seems to happen during the stripping of the js-code. Where is the best place to put an lengthy explanation? In my first question here
17
Q: Including google-code-prettify language extension for Mathematica into this site

halirutanAs most of the users may know, we developed a language extension for google-code-prettify to support the correct highlighting of Mathematica code on mathematica.stackexchange.com. Currently, this extension can be tested by installing it as local JavaScript-plugin into your browser. A detailed dis...

R.M
R.M
@acl Also, I recently found out about EquationTrekker when writing up this answer (actually I knew about it, but had never tried it out before). It's pretty neat and useful
Or should I edit balphas post or write it as comment??
R.M
R.M
@halirutan he won't be pinged in here... leave him a comment.
acl
acl
@RM yes, I also knew about it but had never played with it. neat
2:03 AM
@RM ok and where can I put a bit more of explanation?
Or should I open a new thread in meta?
R.M
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@halirutan Yeah, a new meta post with might be good. Also, ping balpha and point him to your new post
@RM ok, thanks.
Any bets on whether the author of this question takes my advice?
acl
acl
@rcollyer looks unlikely that anybody will drop what they are doing, read the paper, implement what's described there, and write an answer based on that... so I guess he's not getting an answer if he doesn't
@acl The images in the paper are really nice looking. But, nope not going to do it.
R.M
R.M
2:10 AM
@rcollyer definitely seems like non-trivial work is required. Then again, I don't know the graph functions very well
@RM I'm skimming the Graph docs to see if the drawing algorithms are extendable in the same way as NDSolve is extendable.
R.M
R.M
alright, I'm off... hopefully for the day. bye all.
@RM night.
Night all.
2:43 AM
@RM If only there were some site where people could ask general questions about Mathematica... This isn't really "programming", so it doesn't fit on StackOverflow. And the set of Mathematica experts on SuperUsers is minuscule... Oh where oh where can we get solutions to all our interesting problems?!
acl
acl
@BrettChampion I think here (mma.se) is an appropriate place for this kind of question
at least, that was one of the reasons "we" pushed for this site
@BrettChampion Definitely need to get the sarcasm highlighter up and running ... :)
@BrettChampion per this question, is there a method in the GraphPlot toolbox that allows you to specify where the edges are drawn?
3:08 AM
1
Q: Bug in the server-side installed code-prettify script

halirutanBefore going on, please read the comments here. Short story is that the syntax-highlighter for our Mathematica code does not work as expected since we included it as a (I hope the term is correct) server-side script. Basic example: f[x_]:=x^2 Here the x_ should be highlighted in green because ...

R.M
R.M
@BrettChampion heh, this was for a quick sanity check to see if I was missing something obvious... I'll probably post only after trying it myself first to the best I can. Don't want to be a hypocrite when I leave comments and slap the close votes on no-effort questions :)
 
8 hours later…
11:25 AM
0
Q: MathJax buttons/hotkeys script

ManishearthI've written a script that lets you insert dollar symbols automatically(via a keyboard shortcut or button) in the editor window on Stack Exchange sites that support MathJax. Feel free to check it out. Installation instructions and details here

 
2 hours later…
1:06 PM
@Szabolcs I hope you didn't delete your answer because of my remark. I think it can still be salvaged by using a user defined DistanceFunction.
1:23 PM
@Heike You are right, my solution was incorrect, so I had to delete it. I feel a little tired to rewrite it right now and there are other answers already. The user defined DistanceFunction, taking into account radii, is a good idea though.
A little later maybe :)
1:55 PM
Minutes before this post I got an email asking something like "hi how can i post a question in stackexchange iam new here. [...] hope u help me"
@Szabolcs Clearly not like that :-)
 
1 hour later…
acl
acl
3:23 PM
@BrettChampion missed the joke completely! I guess I should not attempt to post in chatrooms after several straight hours of work...
 
2 hours later…
4:57 PM
Is there any way to speed up graphics rendering?
I notice that if certain items are present, then rendering is done on the GPU. Is this generally faster? Is it possible to suppress this for better quality (e.g. antialiasing)? Is it possible to force using the GPU for other types of graphics as well?
5:33 PM
ToBoxes is so slow. On my machine more than half of the time spent on showing graphics can be due to ToBoxes (at least in the examples I tried). If I do something like ... /. Dispatch[{Graphics -> GraphicsBox, Line -> LineBox}] and so on, and make sure that everything is numericized, I can cut the display time into half (as this is 10+ times faster than ToBoxes)
 
1 hour later…
6:49 PM
Can someone whose question has been closed still edit their own post?
@Heike Yes, they can.
But I'll ask --- just in case.
@Szabolcs I was just thinking of this question.
@Szabolcs I was holding back on voting to close that question to give the OP a chance to provide an example.
@Heike I know what you mean. Just got confirmation that he can indeed edit it.
Oh, actually Alexei Boulbitch replied saying he can reproduce the problem after all.
@Szabolcs That's good to know
in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Overflow Chat, 2 mins ago, by Lix
@sza - yep... that's the point. Question asked ->Question gets closed -> Question is improved by OP -> Question gets re-opened...
 
1 hour later…
8:14 PM
@MrWizard Can you help speed up a migration?
Sure. Would you please confirm that the code now given in this post does in fact give the output shown in version 8?
Which one? I can read above but it'll take longer. :-)
@MrWizard I'd like this and this and this merged together. The last one hasn't been migrated yet. That's strange because it's my own question, so I thought there would be no problems
@MrWizard Yes, it does
Thanks.
I'll go for a night walk for maybe half an hour. I'll edit them when I come back.
I need some fresh air.
@Szabolcs enjoy!
8:31 PM
@Szabolcs merged
happy editing
Hello @Sjoerd -- sorry I didn't get to that before you.
How has the moderator workload been recently? Any better?
@MrWizard Much better. Only a handful of flags/week if you'd ask me (and you did)
I see that you just passed me this month
I've been trying. I still don't delete many comments but that's volitional.
I did more than I would have done if not prompted
I felt that I should weigh in the voice of the community, though some seem only be working to get the deputy badge
F'x
F'x
hi all
@SjoerdCdeVries why aren't you blue tonight?
8:45 PM
hi fx
It seems everyone is blue
F'x
F'x
@SjoerdCdeVries mods only, but not you?!
except szabolcs
F'x
F'x
regarding deputy, as I'm the only one to have it (and recently), I have to reply
F'x
F'x
@SjoerdCdeVries not through my eyes :)
8:46 PM
I wasn't really referring to you...
F'x
F'x
so, I was saying: I really think that comments should be heavily removed when posts are edited
as their authors often forget about it, it's a large part of a mod's job to me (when the rest of the site is quiet, that is)
Well, I've removed about 5 times as much comments as the mod who has removed the least.
F'x
F'x
@SjoerdCdeVries wow, dithering?
@Fx I'll be frank that I have dismissed some of your comment flags. I feel that comments are history for the post, and often show interesting development for those who care to read them. I don't like to irrevocably destroy that. I do try to be reasonable.
@Fx hehe, I thought that too. :^)
F'x
F'x
and also: I know I have not contributed much to MMA recently, but I'm heavily invested in Chemistry.SE (and did some work-related travel)
I intend to be back in a bit of time
so, the flagging will resume :)
8:52 PM
@Fx We all need to take breaks. If Szabolcs hadn't he'd be way over 20K by now.
@Fx lol bring it on ^_^
The speckles are how the background of the chat box look to me. I supposed it was intentional
@SjoerdCdeVries I see a light texture but not the dither pattern that your screen cap shows. I think that's just a .GIF artifact.
@MrWizard I feel the same, but if you follow the discussion on this in Meta you see that this is not the only possible way of reasoning. I feel I have at least to represent something of a general view.
@MrWizard Yes, If I look closer I see they're different
@SjoerdCdeVries One way to handle it would be to only remove comments that are flagged by multiple people, but that's going to require keeping a big stack of flags making our job a lot harder.
True that
@MrWizard It seems that most mods tend to be deleterish
8:58 PM
Deleted comments cannot be undeleted, or viewed by normal users; I feel that because of this, despite the fact that comments are "meta content," it is in some ways more serious to delete comments than to delete posts.
The general opinion in the developers/mods group is that commenters should know and expect comments to be volatile.
That may be, but in our time on StackOverflow comments were almost never deleted, and I don't think the community suffered.
If the community at large wants to keep clean comment threads, then we should encourage individual users to clean up their comments.
How? By leaving a comment? ;-)
lol :-) well, there's also meta and chat.
@F'x please do keep flagging. A good percentage of them are acted upon.
F'x
F'x
@MrWizard okay, I will
anyway, I'm gone, see you all later!
9:02 PM
Bye!
@MrWizard I once got a flag with a threat that if I didn't close/delete the 2K+ group would organize themselves to do it.
@Fx bye
@Sjoerd good, let them! That's how it's supposed to work. Moderator action is not always needed, and is IMHO inappropriate in ambiguous cases.
Did you voice your opinion in the Meta thread?
Quite often I restrain myself from voting to close a question because I know it could be an abuse of the super-vote.
@SjoerdCdeVries Link, please.
9
Q: Deleting comments after suggested improvements have been made

Sjoerd C. de VriesLet's assume that I receive a flag on a comment added to an answer, asking for the removal of said comment because the suggested improvement has been used to update the answer and the comment is now moot. Should I delete this comment? I would hesitate to do this, as I strongly believe in "credi...

9:06 PM
@SjoerdCdeVries Thanks. It appears I merely left a comment. I'll consider this a while, and post if I feel it's beneficial.
See you later.
@MrWizard bye
R.M
R.M
9:23 PM
@SjoerdCdeVries you're probably reading too much into it... it might've been more along the lines of "if you don't want to unilaterally delete it (for whatever reason), just close it and the 2k+ crowd will delete it"... with 36 2k+ users, there's plenty of them to do stuff round the clock :)
@SjoerdCdeVries You're black here.
R.M
R.M
His chat parent user is Stack Overflow, not Mathematica... that's why.
@RM Is there a way to change that? It depends on which site you click 'chat'?
R.M
R.M
@Szabolcs You can change it on your chat profile
I see. I didn't explicitly change mine to be Mathematica.SE though.
9:42 PM
I think I'll finish the editing in the morning, I feel really tired...
10:05 PM
@RM is right. I've also noticed that there are more people participating in close votes, people who weren't part of the original crew like Ajasja.
This is a good thing. Also our visits traffic numbers are holding up and increased slightly again overnight (on the 14-day median shown on Area 51 and the site list on StackExchange).
So should I provide the last vote to close this question?
@Verbeia probably. I voted based upon the it not being reproducible according to the OPs comments.
Got to run.

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