Re: A new FrontEnd
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg127960] Re: A new FrontEnd
- From: Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 03:09:50 -0400 (EDT)
- Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
- Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@wolfram.com
- Delivered-to: mathgroup-newout@smc.vnet.net
- Delivered-to: mathgroup-newsend@smc.vnet.net
- References: <k21kj2$9vq$1@smc.vnet.net>
On 9/3/2012 12:00 AM, Mikhail Cherkasskii wrote: > Hello, group. > I had seen posts about FrontEnd interface. I agree with authors who say: FrontEnd in Mathematica 8 is archaic interface. I searched for FrontEnd and Archaic in the math forum archive for comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica, and only your post appeared. Perhaps you could point to other people who claim it is archaic? And again I would like to say about this problem. Today we can see a lot of useful programs that have deal with text, graphics, numerical data and so on. For example look at another CAS system. There are a useful tools for graphics edit, for variables edit. MS Word is simple and powerful text editor with ribbon interface. OriginPro is power tool for graphics. Any modern internet browser has a tab interface. Why not? > But Mathematica forces me use palettes. Yes, they can be useful, but in very limited cases. Summing up I would like to say: today we have a lot of examples and ideas, that can be use for create a new, real new FrontEnd interface. > So far as I can tell, you have one concrete suggestion, to use tabs. Maybe, though that may be patented :) It is possible, so far as I can tell, to use Mathematica entirely without palettes, so I don't understand that complaint. Your claim that MS Word is simple suggests that you do not have a current version of Word. There are quite a few examples of alternative system designs. This paper by Kajler and Soiffer http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=182133&bnc=1 lists about 17 other papers on systems as of about 1994, with lots of features. More designs post-date this paper, but they are generally embedded in systems that are referenced back then. Which other non-Mathematica design features would you adopt? It used to be possible for an "outsider" to write an alternative front-end. I used the emacs mathematica mode by David Jacobson, in the 1990s. It has not been supported for many years, unfortunately. I would guess that if you or anyone else chose to learn all about the various ways of attaching mathematica to other programs, you could make another front end. There are at least two others that I am aware of, both both are "inside" jobs. Siri and WolframAlpha.