Cells as Mathematica Expressions
Like other objects in
Mathematica, the cells in a notebook, and in fact the whole notebook itself, are all ultimately represented as
Mathematica expressions. With the standard notebook front end, you can use the command to see the text of the
Mathematica expression that corresponds to any particular cell.
| menu item | toggle between displayed form and underlying Mathematica expression |
| Ctrl+* or Ctrl+8 (between existing cells) | put up a dialog box to allow input of a cell in Mathematica expression form |
Handling Cell expressions in the notebook front end.
Here is a cell displayed in its usual way in the front end.
Here is the underlying
Mathematica expression that corresponds to the cell.
| Cell[contents,"style"] | a cell with a specific style |
| Cell[contents,"style",options] | a cell with additional options specified |
| Cell[contents,"style1","style2",...,options] | a cell with several styles |
Mathematica expressions corresponding to cells in notebooks.
Within a given notebook, there is always a collection of
styles that can be used to determine the appearance and behavior of cells. Typically the styles are named so as to reflect what role cells which have them will play in the notebook.
| "Title" | the title of the notebook |
| "Section" | a section heading |
| "Subsection" | a subsection heading |
| "Text" | ordinary text |
| "Input" | Mathematica input |
| "Output" | Mathematica output |
Some typical cell styles defined in notebooks.
Here are several cells in different styles.
Here are the expressions that correspond to these cells.
A particular style such as
or
defines various settings for the options associated with a cell. You can override these settings by explicitly setting options within a specific cell.
Here is the expression for a cell in which options are set to use a gray background and to put a frame around the cell.
This is how the cell looks in a notebook.
A few of the large number of possible options for cells.
The standard notebook front end for
Mathematica provides several ways to change the options of a cell. In simple cases, such as changing the size or color of text, there will often be a specific menu item for the purpose. But in general you can use the Option Inspector that is built into the front end. This is typically accessed using the menu item in the menu.
| • Change settings for specific options with menus. |
| • Look at and modify all options with the Option Inspector. |
| • Edit the textual form of the expression corresponding to the cell. |
| • Change the settings for all cells with a particular style. |
Ways to manipulate cells in the front end.
Sometimes you will want just to change the options associated with a specific cell. But often you may want to change the options associated with all cells in your notebook that have a particular style. You can do this by using the command in the front end to create a custom stylesheet associated with your notebook. Then use the controls in the stylesheet to create a cell corresponding to the style you want to change and modify the options for that cell.
| CellPrint[Cell[...]] | insert a cell into your currently selected notebook |
| CellPrint[{Cell[...],Cell[...],...}] | insert a sequence of cells into your currently selected notebook |
Inserting cells into a notebook.
This inserts a section cell into the current notebook.
This inserts a text cell with a frame around it.
CellPrint allows you to take a raw
Cell expression and insert it into your current notebook. The cell created by
CellPrint is grouped with the input and will be overwritten if the input is reevaluated.
