Mathematica 7 users

Wolfram Palettes? What’s up?
In Mathematica 7, there are several bugs related to Wolfram’s built-in palettes.

Short version:
It is absolutely fine to use the Wolfram palettes, but please:

DO NOT LEAVE ANY WOLFRAM PALETTES OPEN ON YOUR SCREEN WHEN YOU EXIT Mathematica

If you leave them open, the Wolfram palettes will autoload the next time you start up Mathematica, and then, due to some bugs, they can then interfere with the correct loading of package contexts.

Long version:
You can reproduce this Mathematica bug as follows:

  1. In Mathematica, go to the Palette menu, and open up one of the Assistant palettes: e.g. Writing Assistant Palette
  2. Leave the palette open, and quit Mathematica (quit the entire application, not just the kernel).
  3. Start up Mathematica from the Finder (Windows or Mac): the Writing Assistant Palette will autoload and be visible on your screen.
  4. Press the START button on the mathStatica palette. Then, mathStatica appears to load correctly:

    However, if you actually check the $ContextPath ...
    $ContextPath
    {PacletManager`, WebServices`, System`, Global`}
    ... you will see that the mathStatica context has NOT loaded, and so none of the mathStatica functions will work.
Simple solution: please don’t leave the v7 Wolfram palettes open on your screen. Close them before you Quit Mathematica. Then everything will work perfectly.



Find Selected Function? What’s up?

Question: I typed:

    Expect  
selected the text with my mouse, and then chose 'Find Selected Function' from the Mathematica Help menu. This works beautifully under Mathematica 6, but it doesn’t work in Mathematica 7. What’s up?

Answer: The problem does not occur in Mathematica 6. This is unfortunately a design 'issue' with Mathematica 7. The problem effects all add-on packages created using Mathematica (rather than Wolfram WorkBench). The problem is new to Mathematica 7. Hopefully, Wolfram will be able to resolve the problem in a future version of Mathematica.

Please note: The mathStatica Help system works perfectly ... it is only Wolfram’s 'Find Selected Function' feature that no longer works in v7.



Autoloading mathStatica under v7? What’s up?
There are actually 2 different ways to make a package autoload in Mathematica 7. Unfortunately, both methods have bugs and neither actually works.

Method 1: guide/InstalledAddOns
In Mathematica 7, open the 'Documentation Center', and go to:

guide/InstalledAddOns
This yields a very nice interface which, in theory, one can use to manage packages. Although the feature does work correctly to load/unload mathStatica, unfortunately Wolfram’s autoload Startup feature is actually non-functional at this time. We have referred the matter to Wolfram.


Method 2: init.m file
A second way to make a package autoload is to add the package, say:

    <<mathStatica.m
to your  init.m  file. This tells Mathematica to load the package when it starts up. You can find your init.m  file in your:

    $UserBaseDirectory / Kernel   directory
While this works in every version of Mathematica to date, it does not work in Mathematica 7, due to a bug in the latter. What’s the bug? For some bizarre reason, if you add mathStatica to your init.m file, Mathematica then internally defines that:

domain = {0, 2 Pi}  
which then interferes with all the domain[.] statements used by mathStatica.

In summary: under Mathematica 7, it is not currently possible to autoload mathStatica. In the grand scheme, this is a really a very minor issue, at least for mathStatica users, as the new mathStatica Startup button makes it incredibly easy to start mathStatica at any time.



My equation numbers look funny? What’s up?

There is an on-going bug in Mathematica relating to the display of CounterBoxes in certain styles. In the example below, both eqn (10.12) and (10.13) incorrectly appear on screen as equation (10.1 ... because Mathematica does not display the CounterBoxes in each equation number correctly.



This bug first appeared under Mathematica 4.1, and was then fixed in Mathematica 4.2 and 5.x. Unfortunately, it then re-appeared in Mathematica 6, and has not been fixed in Mathematica 7. You can force a fix, for the current viewing window, by changing the window magnification, say down to 100%, and then back up to 125% again.