From: jacobson@cello.hpl.hp.com (David Jacobson)
Newsgroups: sci.math.symbolic
Subject: New math.el follows in separate message
Date: 28 Jul 92 23:51:14 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories


A new version of the file math.el is ready and follows in a separate
message.  It implements a mode package for running Mathematica under
Gnu Emacs.

For new users:  

Math-mode lets you run Mathematica under Gnu Emacs and provides a
functionality somewhat similar to the notebook interface available on
the Macintosh.  The input is divided into cells.  Typing ESC RET
submits a cell to Mathematica similar to the way SHIFT RET submits the
cell on the Mac.  At this point, most similarity ends.  There are
commands to copy cells, delete cells, etc.  

I urge you to carfully read the comments (other than the revision
history) at the beginning of the file. 

Most of the help is provided on-line using Emacs help facilities.  If
you have been using Emacs without knowing how to get on-line help, now
is the time to learn about Emacs' on-line help.  The basic two
functions you need are Control-H m, which gives you an overview of the
entire mode of the current buffer,  and Control-h f, which asks for a
function name and gives a detailed description of it.  Also useful if
you need to customize is Control-h v, which provides information on
variables.  If your terminal won't properly send a Control-h (or some
other symbol that Emacs will recognize as a help symbol), be sure to
see your system administrator and make him/her do something about it.

Installation instructions are provided in the comments at the
beginning of the file.  



For old users:

The following changes have been made in math.el since the last general
distribution.  

1.  A lot of small bugs have been fixed.

2.  Major enhancements to C-c C-y (math-copy-cell):
	a.  It sets the mark at the old cell.
	b.  If the input ends with "-" (ie either "23-" to indicate
	    you want to copy cell 23, or just "-" to indicate the
            last cell), the copied cell gets deleted.  This is
	    very helpful when you've made a mistake and want to 
	    avoid getting a cluttered buffer.
	c.  If the input ends with "--" all cells from the selected
	    cell to end of buffer are killed.
	
3.  kill-math-cell is now on ESC k rather than C-c C-k.  For keyboards
    with a meta key this make it a lot easier to kill multiple cells.

4.  C-c C-v runs math-remove-symbol. If the cursor is over some symbol
    such as "foo", it creates a cell containing "Remove[foo]".  This
    is useful for keeping Mathematica's name space clean.

5.  C-c C-x runs math-transform-float.  This is useful for people 
    who copy output from C programs or awk or fortran into Mathematica
    buffers.  It transforms floats like 6.02e-23 to 6.02*10^-23.  
    See also math-transform-floats-in-region.

6.  Mathematica version 2.1 now has a special undocumented hook to help
    it synchronize with math-mode.  (Thank you Dave Withoff.)  If set
    up as in directed in the comments, it should never get confused.
    This was a problem particularly on some operating systems when
    running Mathemtica on a remote host.  It remains compatible with
    version 2.0, but with the old problems.

7.  Math-mode now looks for the first line output during startup and
    saves that away for use by the prefix feature of C-c C-y.  This
    eliminates the need to customize math.el for each different 
    version of Mathematica.

8.  If you use math-remote-host to run Mathematica on another
    host you can use the variable math-remote-user to provide a 
    different user name.

Be sure to carefully read the installation instruction.  They now
require some changes to init.m for version 2.1.

  -- David Jacobson
Newsgroups: sci.math