Questions related to the Mathematica front-end (graphical user interface).
11
votes
2answers
295 views
How to set focus of a dialog window?
I have a dialog, which, when pops up, requests input from the user. How can I set the window up that the focus is on the InputField of the new window (i.e. the ...
39
votes
2answers
930 views
Syntax highlighting for your own functions
Mathematica has a useful feature that for functions and special constructs getting passed local variables (for example Minimize or ...
9
votes
2answers
211 views
What is this character: [esc][comma][esc]?
What is the character obtained with they key sequence Esc,Esc called? On my front end it is not displayed, but there's something there messing up my input. It's a bit annoying when I'm after a $\mu$ ...
9
votes
4answers
1k views
How to change default notebook background color?
How does one change the default notebook background color?
7
votes
2answers
242 views
How do I prevent auto loading of blank notebook at startup?
I'm using Mathematica 8 with operating system Mac OS X Lion. When I open Mathematica it always loads a blank notebook. I don't want it to load anything by default.
In the Preferences pane there ...
7
votes
1answer
130 views
Gestures for forward/backward in help browser (particularly on a Mac)
Is there any way to get gestures (e.g. trackpad- or Magic-Mouse-swiping left/right) to work for navigating forward and backward in the Mathematica help browser, particularly on a Mac?
10
votes
2answers
346 views
How to make a parallel auto-generated .m package from Initialization cells?
according to the documentation at ref/InitializationCell,
When you first save a notebook that contains initialization cells, you have the option to make a ...
6
votes
2answers
191 views
How do I view initialization (or other invisible) cells in a notebook?
I am looking at someone else's notebook, and when I go to evaluate it, it asks whether I want to evaluate the initialization cells. I would like to look at them first, but "I do not see them here nor ...
16
votes
2answers
408 views
How do I extract the contents of a selected cell as plain text?
My aim is to extract the contents of an Input cells as plain text. Ideally I would like to be able to select one or more Input cells and press a button which would then extract the text from these ...
8
votes
2answers
238 views
Default position and size of front-end windows (in Windows 7)
I'm running Mathematica 8 on Windows 7. When I start the Mathematica front end, I would like the menu bar and the blank notebook that opens to appear at a different position and with a different size ...
19
votes
1answer
646 views
Customizing syntax highlighting for private cell styles
Is there any way to set up a cell style with a particular syntax highlighting?
For example, I'd like to have a CProgram cell to write in blue the C special words.
I have done it by setting ...
13
votes
2answers
446 views
Custom Mathematica Shortcut: Copy as $\LaTeX$
If you edit the
Wolfram Research\Mathematica\8.0\SystemFiles\FrontEnd\TextResources\Windows\MenuSetup.tr
file you can make Ctrl+Shift+C copy not plain but in ...
6
votes
3answers
298 views
How to get rid of Panel margins?
I have a feeling that there is something wrong in general with Mathematica's way of dealing with margins and spaces among/around objects in Graphics, ...
9
votes
1answer
392 views
Toolbars in Mathematica
Mathematica seriously lacks some useful toolbars. I wonder why keeping a totally barebone gui is part of WRI's policy? Would such a feature be so platform-specific that it does not worth design it? I ...
10
votes
3answers
559 views
WYSIWYG table creating and editing
In Microsoft Office OneNote 2010, creating and editing tables is easy. There are simple toolbar controls for creating tables:
,
and editing them once they exist:
.
My question is, what's an easy ...
4
votes
1answer
271 views
Invisible \[Conjugate] glyph in the linux frontend
I have a very annoying problem.
The Conjugate glyph (*) does not show when I type.
That is, if I type \[Conjugate] or ⋮co⋮ then ...
14
votes
1answer
453 views
Can the position of Tooltips be changed?
Is it possible to change the position of tool tips, which currently always appear to the lower right of the mouse position. In the screen grab below the mouse is over 10000000 and the tooltip appears ...
9
votes
2answers
684 views
How to improve the typesetting of mathematical contents
Until I started diving into Mathematica, I was not using much computer software for symbolic computation. I did my analysis by hand on blank sheets, the calculations using Python or MATLAB, and the ...
6
votes
1answer
255 views
How to pipe a stream to another notebook?
Can I pipe an OutputStream object created by OpenWrite (or similar) to a notebook instead of a file? I am aware that I can use ...
9
votes
2answers
166 views
MouseAppearance and cursor problems
I have to create a Graph object, which can be manipulated by the user, though I do not want to have the Graph-specific cursor ...
20
votes
2answers
471 views
How do I add new menuitems to menus?
What are some complete examples of what one would include in a FrontEnd init.m that would make use of FrontEnd`AddMenuCommands ...
10
votes
5answers
473 views
Using DynamicModule variables outside the DynamicModule
Take the following example for hiding/showing a notebook through a Checkbox:
...
11
votes
0answers
275 views
Is it possible to regain Mathematica 5.2's palette input focus behaviour with version 8.0?
Between Mathematica 5.2 and later versions, there has been a change in determining which notebook gets the palette input focus, which leads to quite unfortunate behaviour if you use ...
4
votes
2answers
157 views
How to work around Column cutting off a pixel row from images?
I have a problem where Column will occasionally cut off a single pixel from the top of images.
To reproduce the problem, evaluate this:
...
11
votes
2answers
1k views
Fontsize is too small
I have this annoyance for a long time now: every Text cell uses the default font size, though it appears too small on my screen. See comparison of same text, same font (Times New Roman), same fontsize ...
7
votes
2answers
188 views
Revert FullForm-ed text to prettyprinted
Sometimes strings in a notebook/package file end up garbled due to some unknown/unintentional conversion of the expression/cell/notebook. I could not find a way to revert such unreadable text to its ...
8
votes
4answers
501 views
Create shortcut in Mathematica for “Equal Symbol Aligned Math Cell”
How do I create a new shortcut for creating a "Equal Symbol Aligned Math Cell" in Mathematica 8?
Update
I meant a keyboard shortcut. An "Equal Symbol Aligned Math Cell" is exactly what @Heike ...
3
votes
2answers
193 views
How to close the front end so I can clear all Global variables?
I first thought that doing Quit[] in a cell, or Evaluation->Quit kernel, is supposed to remove all Global variables, but I have a case where this is not happening, then I read that there is a command ...
19
votes
2answers
358 views
Programmatically copy code so that all output is commented out
UPDATE: The final palette has a new home here! Please test and provide feedback (usability, suggestions, bugs)
A note to the readers and voters: This is intended for community use, so please test the ...
23
votes
2answers
665 views
Saving a notebook as PDF, preserving syntax highlighting
Currently, one may save notebooks as PDFs from the menu by Save As... and then selecting PDF (on a Mac, I imagine it is similar on other OSs). However, the ...
16
votes
2answers
281 views
Are later versions of the Front-End compatible with older Kernels?
At my graduate school, all of the clusters still use version-6, and I only have version-7 and version-8 installed on my computer. I would like to use those machines remotely. Are either of the ...
8
votes
2answers
266 views
Move the cursor in a notebook using the keyboard
How can I move through a notebook using only the keyboard?
If one tries to use the arrow keys, the cursor tends to get "trapped" in comments and error messages.
12
votes
5answers
211 views
Is it possible to cause a notebook to be hidden when pressing the close button?
Is it possible to cause a notebook to be hidden (Visible -> False) instead of closing it when pressing the close button in the title bar?
The ...
20
votes
1answer
371 views
What is the most effective way to setup a Notebook with transparent background but solid contents?
I know there is a Notebook option WindowOpacity can be used to adjust the opacity of a whole notebook. But what I want is keeping the text and graphics and so on ...
13
votes
1answer
276 views
How to work with characters from CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B correctly?
Background:
Recently I'm trying to deal with some Chinese characters which belongs to the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B block. The motive comes from some further interest following a former ...
16
votes
3answers
881 views
Antialiasing in 3D
Is it possible? Is it platform specific? Does it rely on the graphics hardware? Why does the antialiasing slider under Preferences > Appearance > Graphics do nothing? I remember seeing some ...
19
votes
2answers
487 views
What are the most common (usual) ways to make palettes with non-trivial functionality?
What are the best (most robust and most convenient) ways to create palettes that can be installed permanently (using Palettes -> Install Palette...) and are safe ...
9
votes
2answers
147 views
How to force neat linewrapping in Print?
I am regularly annoyed by the fact, that a neatly arranged Print statement gets ruined by a large piece of data, which - instead of linewrapping "in place" - is ...
10
votes
1answer
243 views
Creating custom notation
How does one generate custom symbols? For example, the physicist notation for the rotation is "nabla cross function". In this case however, Mathematica complains that the ...
28
votes
3answers
470 views
Usage of \[InvisibleApplication] and other related invisible characters
From the front end, \[InvisibleApplication] can be entered as Esc @ Esc, and is an invisible operator for @!. By an unfortunate ...
11
votes
3answers
201 views
Why do buttons with ChoiceDialog freeze the front end?
Pressing the button below will freeze my front end. An unpainted white dialog box comes up, then it completely freezes, and I need to forcibly kill the front end. CPU usage stays at zero during ...
6
votes
2answers
149 views
automatic coloring of function names
Usually, when I define a function and then use it later, the function name is colored in black. But every once in a while, the function color is blue, both in its definition and when I use it later. ...
