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Install SciDraw from the download?

I just downloaded Mark Caprio's SciDraw Mathematica add-on and unzipped the archive. Now I have a top-level folder SciDraw-0.0.7 that contains in turn the subfolders doc and packages; and SciDraw-0.0.7/packages in turn contains a subfolder SciDraw (along with others such as BlockOptions, CustomTicks, etc.).

Question: Exactly what should be done to install what was downloaded into the MathematicaUserBase's Applications folder, so that one can do a <<SciDraw` load command? Does that already take care of loading or otherwise making available the other packages (BlockOptions, CustomTicks, etc)?

Or is the intention that one separately installs each of those SciDraw-0.0.7/packages subfolders as a separate folder in MathematicaUserBase's Applications folder?

If it's necessary to do this, I do know how, within a subfolder such"MyApp", say, of the MathematicaUserBase's Applications folder, to create a Kernel subfolder and put an init.m into it containing just an initialization cell

Get['MyApp`MyApp`"];

so that from the Front End one can load the package by <<MyApp`, i.e., without having to use any Get command.

So what exactly is the intended procedure with SciDraw?

And why, if you don't mind my asking, is this not spelled out clearly in the docs?

POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg
3 Replies

I'm sure installation instructions will be added eventually. Not sure about the "doc" folder though... That one really doesn't require any installation, you could keep it anywhere on your computer since you have to open the files manually anyway. (They won't integrate with the Documentation Center.) So the instructions would come down to only the first point.

Haha, well, with 200 packages you won't notice eight new ones! Maybe it's just me then.

POSTED BY: Bianca Eifert

I haven't used SciDraw in a while, but the procedure I recall from the old LevelScheme incarnation was to put each subfolder of the "packages" folder into $UserBaseDirectory/Applications. There's no need to create any Kernel init files yourself, all the packages have proper init files that will work. Loading SciDraw then indeed takes care of loading the other packages as required. If you want to change this structure, you'll have to hunt down too many things in the packages to make it worthwhile in my opinion.

The only problem I see is that you end up with 8 packages which may cause a bit of clutter in your Applications folder if you already have a large collection of packages... (If you absolutely must alleviate this, then keep all the SciDraw-related packages in a folder somewhere else and add that folder to the $Path.)

As for the docs, I believe SciDraw is still in beta and the docs are generally nowhere near completion. On the homepage it says that "The reference manual is complete, and there are plenty of examples, but the guide for new users is still under construction."

POSTED BY: Bianca Eifert

Yes, I suspected that what you say is the case. I should have examined each init.m to see that it is indeed correctly set up so that a simple <<PkgName` command loads it.

If the packages' author sees this, I would urge him to add a simple .txt file at the top-level in the archive saying simply to:

(1) copy each of the subfolders in the "packages" folder to the MathematicaUserBase's Applications folder; and

(2) cry the doc folder into the copied SciDraw folder.

"Clutter" of the Applications folder is hardly a problem, at least for me: I already have some 200 packages — some very small and some quite large — there!

POSTED BY: Murray Eisenberg
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