February 2018

From: Dr Christopher Mabb, Scientific Word Ltd.
To: Our Scientific Word/WorkPlace/Notebook Technical Typesetting list

1. ListFile fragment:    We're assuming you've discovered how to add the Fragments panel to the v6.0 sidebar content; if not, open the sidebars by clicking the vertical dots in the middle of the left and right sides of your editing window, click on the Add dropdown at the top of the left or right sidebar, and select Fragments. One of the videos of our v6.0 Training Course deals with Fragments, and we invite you to watch that first for background information (click the cog to watch in HD).
   Among the extra functionality provided by the fragments supplied, the ListFile fragment allows you to include selected lines of another file; this is useful for including computer code or similar. To see the effect, download the sample file listfilesample.sci and put the code file (open the link, then Ctrl-S to save) at D:/Documents/SWPDocs/basiccode.txt (if you put it somewhere else then you will need to modify the TeX Field in the .sci document accordingly, using right-click – Properties – TeX button properties). The resulting PDF Preview should look like this.
   Notice that the TeX Field allows you to specify the first and last line of the section to be included.



2. Large operators:    While we're on Fragments, one of our v5.5 users Emailed just this week asking (among other things):

   Is it easy to import the package which allows a big integral operator to be used at will?

   In our response we said:

   The integral and sigma etc. re-size automatically depending whether they are inline or displayed. If you want to specify that an operator should be large then you can right-click – Properties – Size – Big – OK. You could save this as a Fragment if you don’t wish to resize each of them.

   To save a fragment in v5.5, highlight the text or maths required and then select File – Save Fragment and give it a name by which you want to be able to play it back while holding down the Ctrl key.
   You'll remember (Item 8) that Technical Support for v5.5 of Scientific Word, WorkPlace and Notebook ended for Standard users in June 2017 (the second anniversary of the release of v6.0) but this does not apply to Premier users, Annual Maintenance sites and Support Contracts, for whom we continue to provide our 2-hour service.



3. Activation:    We've heard reports, and have seen it occasionally, that Scientific Word/WorkPlace v6.0 can 'forget' its registration/activation. The standard reply we send to users in this case says:

   Thanks for your Email; your licence is permanent. If for some reason (possibly a Scientific Word/WorkPlace update or Windows upgrade) your system forgets its registration, then simply Activate again using the serial number we supplied, according to the installation instructions for which we gave you a link.

   We've not encountered the problem frequently enough to determine the cause, but we suspect it's actually caused by antivirus software or disk cleanup utilities regarding the Scientific Word/WorkPlace licence file as superfluous and removing it.
   No harm done: simply Activate again!



4. Laplace transforms:    As you may have noticed, we demonstrate typing mathematics on our Scientific Word page using some expressions from a table of Laplace transforms; the video itself is here. Someone from Ukraine took us to task, saying:

   There shoud be the Laplace operator ("curvy L") at the left in all lines, which may be inserted as $\mathcal{L}$ *for Laplace) and $\mathcal{F}$ (for Fourier) ? With using \usepackage{ amssymb }. And, definitely, it is expected in the menu of the editor, as well as for the Fourier transform

   In acknowledging that he was absolutely right, we produced this video about how to typeset the Laplace Transform symbol in Scientific Word/WorkPlace – and how to calculate Laplace Transforms using Scientific WorkPlace.
   Perhaps it might be useful for some of our other users, we thought...



5. Silent mode:    This v5.5 compiler issue comes up from time to time. While we don't mean to suggest that you can just ignore problems with your document and they will go away, nevertheless the first thing to bear in mind is that many of the things that L^aT_eX says to you during compiling are more in the nature of information messages than error messages.
   For the user asking the question on this occasion we firstly located and corrected the particular issue causing the compiler problem. But we also offered a second approach to bear in mind as a quick fix in future:

   Quick fix
       Open the document using File – Open and try to compile (File – Preview PDF). When the compiler stumbles, hit Carriage Return once to acknowledge the question mark, and then enter “S” (without the quotes) followed by Return, to enter Silent mode (scrollmode). That’s saying to the compiler, “Yes, I know, but don’t bother telling me about it”.
       You’ll need to go into Silent mode for each pass of the compiler, every time you compile the document.

   The first approach (finding and correcting the problem) is clearly better for any particular document since it solves the problem for that document long-term; but it is also useful to know about Silent mode because it can be a quick 'Get out of jail free' card in many situations.



6. Facebook:    If you've got time on your hands, why not spend some of it exploring our Facebook page, where we post several times a week? We'd love you to share our page with your friends on Facebook... and all the pages on our website have got their own Share button
   
   Share
   
   at the bottom. Thanks for telling your academic friends about Scientific Word/WorkPlace – we appreciate it!