21-127: CoM

Mathematica Setup

In order to fully view and execute the Mathematica notebooks in this course you will need to configure your Mathematica installation. To this end, you have to download a few files, and place them in the right directories on your system.

Unix
Download the following gzipped tar file mta-setup.tgz, and unpack it somewhere (preferably in a directory dedicated to this course). Then type 

	$ ./mta-install
and the appropriate files should be installed to your .Mathematica directory.

Non-Unix
You will have to get the files individually, and put them in the right places. The files you need to copy are dimath.m, automata.m, LectStyle.nb. The first two should go into your Kernel directory, and the latter into StyleSheets. The files are available here Mta Files.

Loading the Files
If the installation is successful, Mathematica will automatically load the style file when you attempt to open a course notebook. However, you must load the dot-m files by hand. The cleanest way to do this is to type 

Needs["automata`"]


dimath::ldmsg: dimath package loading. Version 4.0
automata::ldmsg: automata package loading. Version 4.0
Note the backquote after automata. As indicated, two reassuring messages should appear, indicating that everything is ready to go. If you prefer, you can modify your init.m file so that these macro files are loaded automatically every time you launch Mathematica. For example, my init.m currently looks like this: 
Needs["automata`"]
Get["experimental.m"]

$Path = 
{ ".", 
  "/home/sutner/.Mathematica/3.0/Kernel",
  "/usr/local/mathematica/AddOns/StandardPackages",
  "/usr/local/mathematica/AddOns/StandardPackages/StartUp",
  "/usr/local/mathematica/AddOns/Applications",
  "/usr/local/mathematica/AddOns/ExtraPackages",
  "/usr/local/mathematica/SystemFiles/Graphics/Packages"
}

Let me know if there is a serious problem with this procedure. If someone knows a way to automate the installation for Windows 95/NT or Mac, I would appreciate learning about it.

Warning
You have to shift-click on the notebooks (extension .nb), otherwise the notebook will be downloaded, and Mathematica will be launched automatically (provided that your browser is properly configured). That may sound like the right behaviour, but as it turns out, every time you click on a notebook a new copy of Mathematica is launched. This is a disaster, since Mathematica consumes quite a bit of resources, and you absolutely don't want to have several copies of it running simultaneously. Just donwload the files (they are plain ASCII), and then open them from Mathematica by hand.

Last updated 980915 by sutner@cs