Presentations in Mathematica for lectures

[Anthony_Siegman]

If I've started to prepare a post on any of these fora; get myself tangled up in syntax, or just decide to not carry through with that post; and want to delete everything I've done and either quit or start over, how do I do that?

More explicitly, how come as I'm typing this I see "Preview" and "Submit" buttons at the bottom of the window -- but no "Cancel" or "Quit" button?

[Kathy_Bautista]

If I've started to prepare a post on any of these fora; get myself tangled up in syntax, or just decide to not carry through with that post; and want to delete everything I've done and either quit or start over, how do I do that?

More explicitly, how come as I'm typing this I see "Preview" and "Submit" buttons at the bottom of the window -- but no "Cancel" or "Quit" button?

This seems to be a "feature" of the standard distribution of phpBB. While a bit simplistic, if you change your mind and decide not to carry through with your post, probably the easiest course of action is to use your browser's back button and return to the forum. Or you can use the navigation bar/breadcrumbs at the top of the page (e.g. Board index ‹ Higher Education (Undergraduate and Graduate) ‹ Mathematics and Statistics (Higher Education)) to navigate to another section of the forum.

-Kathy

[Carlos_Salema]

Hi everybody

d) Exporting a graphic (say in pdf format) does not necessary allow other programs (such as Illustrator) to further process it, which is a pity.

Have to say, I don't understand this. There may be a few "gotchas" in Mathematica's export functionality, depending on just how you do the Export (or Copy/Save) process; but assuming you export a graphic properly into a standard format, the resulting file should be (and in my experience essentially always is) editable by any other software that is intended to handle that format. (I do this all the time.)

I agree that there are some quirks. Here's a resource from my collection that lays a few issues out in detail: http://www.uoregon.edu/~noeckel/MathematicaGraphics.html#GraphicsAnnotation

Below is an excerpt (issue #14) from the above link, which may or may not be relevant to the issues Carlos has experienced.

Mathematica graphics shows incorrect fonts in Adobe Illustrator

Mathematica's interactive drawing tools are only a meager subset of what a program like Adobe Illustrator can do, and so the interoperability between these two programs remains an important issue. I'll assume Illustrator CS 3 and Mathematica Version 6 here. If you're interested in older versions, check the web archive.

As you can tell from the archive link above, this page has been online for many years, and for historical reasons has been geared toward EPS as the main format. With Mathematica V6, EPS format has ceased to be the optimal vector format because it doesn't support transparency or gradients well. So we should aim for PDF export instead, in particular on a Mac where this is the native graphics format.

The official solution:
It turns out that we can completely fix all of Illustrator's font problems with PDF and EPS by executing the following cell in Mathematica (assuming Mac OS X):

Code: Select all

With[{temp = Directory[]},
If[ $Failed =!= SetDirectory["~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Fonts/"],
If[! MemberQ[FileNames[], "Mathematica"],
  CreateDirectory["Mathematica"];
  Run["/bin/ln -s " <> $InstallationDirectory <>
    "/SystemFiles/Fonts/Type1 " <> $HomeDirectory <>
    "/Library/Application\\ Support/Adobe/Fonts/Mathematica/"];
  SetDirectory["Mathematica"];
  Print[Style["Created symbolic link\n", Green], FileNames[],
   Style["\nin folder\n", Green], Directory[]],
  Print[Style[
    "Nothing to be done, folder already exists.\nTo re-install, first remove\n",
    Red], Directory[] <> "/Mathematica"]];
SetDirectory[temp]]
]

This creates a new directory Mathematica in the folder ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Fonts/, and places a symbolic link to Mathematica's Type1 fonts in it. The symlink prescription was sent to me by Aron Yoffe who got it from at Wolfram Tech Support; I made it into a Mathematica script and added an extra level to the directory structure to avoid potential naming conflicts in Adobe's Fonts folder.

If you prefer to install the fonts for multiple users, replace ~/Library by /Library and $HomeDirectory by $RootDirectory. This cell only has to be re-evaluated if the Adobe directory "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/" is modified (i.e., after updating Adobe products); but there is no harm in repeating the instructions (the procedure does nothing if the needed directory is already in place).
Once you press shift-return on the above cell, you'll even be able to copy Mathematica graphics to the clipboard and paste it directly into Illustrator without the dreaded font substitution dialog. This is something that the two alternative methods below don't allow.
At this point it's worth pointing to a remark on another page that also applies here: when exporting annotated graphics from Illustrator, it's a good idea to create outlines from fonts (Type > Create Outlines) first.

(SEE THE WEBSITE FOR MORE...)

Many thanks

Carlos Salema