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Managing your notebooks

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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

#1549 — Managing your notebooks

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

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#1576

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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#1605

On 9 Apr, 13:11, Jason Quinn <jason.lee.qu...@gmail.com> 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

For versioning .m files, I easily developed a GET function (similar to
the Get one), which operates like this:

GET[file] looks for any file (in my paths) of the form "file-nnn.m",
where the n are numbers, and loads the one with the highest number.

In this way, while saving my file versions, I simply add a progressive
number to the file and I'm sure to automatically load (or reload) only
the last one. If I am not happy, I delete the last and get
automatically back to the previous.

The same concept may be used to change directory.

ADL

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