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Groups > comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica > #1576

Re: Managing your notebooks

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On 09/04/2011 12:11, Jason Quinn wrote:
> I was curious if anybody would be willing to share there strategy for
> managing their Mathematica notebook versions.
>
> In my experience, Mathematica notebooks are "fragile" because running
> the code is not cleanly separated from using the code. Notebooks
> indicate modification after a cell is run even if no changes to the
> code were made. In practice, after using a notebook for a while, it's
> easy to forget if changes were actually made that you would want to
> keep, so when you are prompted to save a notebook, you are left with a
> dilemma. Staying safe, you save again and again which leads to a
> proliferation of versions.
>
> I am aware you can make cells edit protected but this doesn't solve
> the problem. I also know about the "Notebook history" feature, which
> seems to be of very limited value. I always end up with so many
> "versions" of my notebooks that I forget what the differences between
> them are.
>
> I can't help but feel that I'm missing something. I have no problems
> managing compiled code or interpreted scripts but notebooks are much
> more challenging. Is this something you experience as well. Have you
> too noticed extra difficulty managing your mathematica notebooks?
>
> Comments? Suggestions?
> Jason
>
I develop code mostly in package (.m) files. These can be formatted very 
much like notebooks (but with a few restrictions) - they can contain 
headings, and text cells - all encoded as comments in the .m file on disk.

You can execute cells in a .m file, and obtain output cells, which are 
not stored to disk, so the front end does not consider such files to be 
modified each time something is executed.

If I really want to save some output, I use a notebook.

I normally back up fairly frequently, and I have a command, outside of 
Mathematica that will copy a file to a special location with a unique 
index number. Thus, when I need to save a .m file, I simply overwrite 
what is there already, safe in the knowledge that I can't do much damage 
even in the worst case!

David Bailey
http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk

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Managing your notebooks Jason Quinn <jason.lee.quinn@gmail.com> - 2011-04-09 11:11 +0000
  Re: Managing your notebooks David Bailey <dave@removedbailey.co.uk> - 2011-04-09 22:00 +0000
  Re: Managing your notebooks ADL <alberto.dilullo@tiscali.it> - 2011-04-11 11:06 +0000

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