December 2025 mailing – Scientific Word Ltd.

Generating bibliography (v5): One of our Individual Annual Maintenance users in Europe asked us:

I am in the process of writing an article using my SciWord 5.0; <snip>
For the time being, I'm quite happy to go on as usual. Problem is: the file fails to compile correctly using BIBTEX.
I'm enclosing the .log file, can you tell me what I'm doing wrong?

We replied:

This could be for one of several reasons. [It could be that]:

The citations in Scientific Word do not specify in which .bib file the bibliography information is to be found (see bib1.png attached, showing a reference ‘macauley’ from the database file camel.bib)

That .bib file is not one of those highlighted to be interrogated in the grey BibTeX box at the end of your document (see bib2.png attached, showing the camel.bib database file highlighted to be interrogated)

The required database file (in this case camel.bib) needs to be located in (a subfolder of) your \bib folder C:\sw50\TCITeX\BibTeX\bib: in this case camel.bib is in C:\sw50\TCITeX\BibTeX\bib\camel\ (see bib3.png attached, showing the camel.bib database file in C:\sw50\TCITeX\BibTeX\bib\camel)

You have failed to run Typeset – CompilePDF – Generate a bibliography before Typeset – PreviewPDF (see bib4.png attached)

We recommend you carefully re-watch Module “6-2: BibTeX” of our Scientific Word Training Course; we sent you the download links for our Training Course videos in our Email <snip>. We recommend you follow through and make sure you can generate the document and citations shown in the Training Course video Module “6-2: BibTeX”. You will then be in a position to create your own citations in the document you’re currently writing.

She responded:

thanks for the mail. Was it useful? Yes.
Where was I going wrong? failed to run Typeset – CompilePDF – Generate a bibliography before Typeset – PreviewPDF
Has the problem been solved? Yes and no.

I have been a little sloppy in creating the .bib file, with frequent use of copy-and-paste, so entries are in different styles e.g. sometimes { } are used (accepted) , other times " " is used (not accepted), first names and surnames are swapped etc. I shall now carefully make all the changes, that should do the trick.

to which we said:

We recommend using the (free) program Jabref to organise your bibliographic references in a consistent form. Please see our June 2009 mailing Item 3.
We strongly recommend you find 4 hours to watch the videos of our £4000+ Training Course; you’ll find it time well-spent.

The information above applies to v5.0 and v5.5 equally.

Importing .cst file: A user sent us an Email with the Subject "Adding/Importing a new Style file (.cst) created by a publisher as a choice into SW5.5", and wrote:

How do I incorporate a new style file from a publisher into list of choices in SW5.5?

We suspected the question was posed incorrectly; we said:

I think your Subject heading “RE: Adding/Importing a new Style file (.cst)” must be a mistake, since .cst files are unimportant and only affect the on-screen appearance. For a description of the various file types involved, please see our Midsummer 2020 mailing Item 3 (first paragraph of quoted text); also see our December 2014 mailing Item 4.

Assuming you meant instead to ask about ‘Importing a new Style file [= typesetting specifications] (.cls)’, that is the question we answered in our Email of <snip> [see our August 2025 mailing Item 5 (first half)]

If you really did mean to ask about the .cst (screen appearance) file, see our November 2023 mailing Item 4.

Maple/MuPAD: This started out as the file name/address question which keeps coming up: see our February 2011 mailing Item 2 and our November 2018 mailing Item 5. So when someone with the free 30-day trial of Scientific WorkPlace wrote:

I got a 1-month license for SWP 5.5. A couple of years ago, I used SWP 5.5 <snip> at the university. I can open my work of this time with your version <snip> but I cannot preview them or generate a pdf-file from them... <snip> Can you help me ?

we said:

Please see our October 2025 mailing Item 8, which says:
The second error “Characters in the filename or directory are invalid” usually occurs because users have included a space in the filename or folder; typically this is because they have saved the docment in a subfolder of My Documents rather than in c:\swp55\docs (or a subfolder of this).
Please save your document in c:\swp55\docs, and then check that Typeset – PreviewPDF generates the PDF. If there is still a problem, try starting with the document File – Open – SWSamples – checkout.tex.

Unfortunately that wasn't the only problem. He replied:

Thank you very much for your quick answer. This error has actually dispappered. However, at the university, I did a lot of works with SWP 5.5 with a low version of Maple (instead of MuPAD) and of course there works are not recognized by the version SWP+MuPAD.

This was surprising. We tried to give a comprehensive response:

Bonjour! Thanks for your Email – good to hear from you again. You say you did a lot of work with SWP 5.5 with Maple, but this is not quite correct. You’ll see from our August 2024 mailing Item 8 that we included Maple with Scientific WorkPlace up until version 4.0 (possibly) 4.1, but that from version 5.0 we used MuPAD.

See our Email announcing the release of v4.0 which says (at the bottom):
New features include:
** HTML output with the mathematics in a variety of graphics formats or as MathML.
** A customizable symbol palette, so you can easily access the symbols you use the most
** A new manual, "Typesetting with Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Word"
** A new manual, "A Gallery of Document Shells for SWP and SW", in PDF form on the CD
** Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Notebook now contain both the MuPAD 2.0 and Maple 5.1 computer algebra engines
But when we released version 5.0 (see https://www.sciword.co.uk/v5-0.htm and https://www.sciword.co.uk/allthedetails.htm) the computation information only refers to MuPAD:
Complex computational capability makes SWP and SNB indispensable tools.

Compute with MuPAD. In SWP and SNB, compute right in your document with the MuPAD 2.5 computer algebra engine.

Use enhanced MuPAD capabilities. The new MuPAD 2.5 kernel is an upgrade from the MuPAD 2.0 kernel included in Version 4.0. New features include improved 2D and 3D plotting, expanded ODE capabilities, an expanded Rewrite submenu, and an improved Simplify operation.

So you would need to go back to Scientific WorkPlace version 4 to have access to Maple. Version 4 was released in January 2002 and superseded by version 5 in August 2003, so we would be very surprised if there are sites with Scientific WorkPlace version 4 still running. If it really is only two or three years since you used a Scientific WorkPlace system with Maple (ie. version 4) at the university, we recommend going to the university and asking for special permission to use their Scientific WorkPlace systems temporarily in order to load your existing documents and save them as PDFs or convert them to a format that no longer requires Maple computation.

We do still have the distribution CDs for version 4, but it is no longer possible to Register a new version 4 system so as to obtain a working version. Nous sommes désolés de vous décevoir.

Sometimes we can't solve the problem.

PDF Preview: An Individual Annual Maintenance user in Singapore wrote with what seemed to be an unusual problem:

Both Kofax Power PDF and Adobe Acrobat are installed on my laptop, and although I have set Adobe Acrobat as the default PDF application in my system settings, Scientific Workplace 5.5 continues to default to Kofax Power PDF when I use the "Review PDF" function.

Despite trying various troubleshooting methods on my end, the issue persists. Given the age of Scientific Workplace 5.5, I suspect this may be a compatibility issue, and I'm hoping you might have some insight into a solution.

But it turned out to be straight-forward:

I haven’t come across the Kofax Power PDF / Adobe Acrobat issue before, but I expect it depends on the Scientific WorkPlace setting at Typeset – Expert Settings – PDF Preview Settings – Select a previewer – Acrobat (and choosing the appropriate executable filename from the Browse menu). Please see the screenshot attached.

He kindly confirmed that:

I just followed the steps you suggested and successfully changed the appropriate executable filename from the Browse menu. Adobe Acrobat is now the default PDF previewer.

Typesetting specifications: We gave a fairly complete summary of using external typesetting specifications in our August 2025 mailing Item 5. A v5.0 user wrote from South America:

I'm preparing a paper to be presented in the Colombian Journal of Statistics, whose website is https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/estad . They ask that it be written in LaTex. I'm attaching the LaTex template and the corresponding output in PDF format. Please, how can I use Scientific Workplace to write it?

We replied:

This is non-trivial, and you should start by reading our most recent summary of using external typesetting specifications (ie. those not included with Scientific WorkPlace) in our August 2025 mailing Item 5

The LaTeX typesetting specifications for the Colombian Journal of Statistics are contained in the .zip file LaTeX_macro_package.zip available at https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/estad by clicking on LATEX TEMPLATE. Unzip the .zip file this downloads, to produce the typesetting specification files in a new folder (eg. called ‘LaTeX_macro_package’).

followed by:

You may wish to ask someone very competent with computers to complete these steps for you.

To set up the typesetting specifications:
From our August 2025 mailing Item 5, follow the link to our November 2023 mailing Item 3 to follow those instructions as a pattern. Your class is not nzjm.cls but revcoles.cls. You will need to:

Put the .rap file attached (RevcolesTest.rap: right-click – Save link As) in C:\swp50\Docs\ and then go into Scientific WorkPlace; use Tools – Document Manager, Browse to RevcolesTest.rap and unwrap it. This will produce the .tex document and the graphics used in the document

[If it has not already been created by 1 above] Create a folder C:\swp50\TCITeX\TeX\LaTeX\contrib\revcoles\ and save the class file revcoles.cls into this new folder as C:\swp50\TCITeX\TeX\LaTeX\contrib\revcoles\revcoles.cls

For the bibliography, put references.bib into C:\swp50\TCITeX\BibTeX\bib\ as C:\swp50\TCITeX\BibTeX\bib\references.bib

Create a folder C:\swp50\Styles\revcoles\ and save a copy of C:\swp50\Styles\article\article.cst to this new folder as C:\swp50\Styles\revcoles\article.cst

Then to use the template:

Open the .tex document RevcolesTest.tex in C:\swp50\Docs; this will have been created by unwrapping the .rap file in 1 above

To generate the bibliography, you will need to click on Typeset – CompilePDF – Generate a bibliography. The first time, you will get an error message in the TrueTeX DVI Previewer (grey box) about C:/swp50/Docs/Table.eps ; you can get past this message by pressing Return at the ‘?’ when it occurs (probably 3 times). For future, you can then edit the document and delete the TeXField containing the graphic Table.eps which gives the empty box on p1 of the PDF

Check that you now have the bibliography file RevcolesTest.bbl in C:\swp50\Docs

In Scientific WorkPlace, click on Typeset – Preview PDF to produce the PDF of your document, using the typesetting specifications for the Colombian Journal of Statistics

You will see there is no graphic at the bottom of p1 of the PDF because we cannot handle EPS graphics in an \includegraphic TeXField. We recommend you either:

Use a different graphics format, eg JPG, WMF etc. inside the \includegraphics TeXField (see the picture of Barry on p1); or

You can use our proprietary File – ImportPicture (see Fig.1 at the top of p2).

Sometimes it really is possible to incorporate external typesetting specifications.

v5.5 licence: This issue is obscure and will be of little interest to most users. It started in quite an ordinary way:

I have Scientific Word v 5.5 running on Windows 11. The software was working well. Our IT people installed the software on the new machine. <snip> How do I get the license key to function again?

With his Computer ID and serial number we generated a new licence file for him, but the program only opened in Viewer mode. We tried many things, all unsuccessful. Some time later, the user wrote:

Scientific Word 5.5 is working. In late August, the technician from our central technology group, OneIT, came and tried to install Scientific Word as he had done when the new computer was delivered. He could not resolve the license error's failure to open the software. <snip>

I contacted the college IT person who had kept Scientific Word functioning for the 20+ years before the college IT operation was subsumed into OneIT.

[He] sent me the attached email. This command-level sequence allows me to open the software, and everything is functioning using a desktop shortcut.

We were pleased this worked for the user; but this OneIT-specific problem reminded us of the issue we had with Acer computers, documented in our April 2009 mailing Item 2 and June 2009 mailing Item 1.
In case anyone else should have the same problem in future, we took the opportunity of asking the college IT person for his analysis of the problem. Feel free to let us have your serial number and request 'the OneIT Email of 25/9/25'.

Markers: A professor in America asked:

I am writing a book of earlier papers. When compiled as a book duplicate markers are distinguished by the chapter numbers. However, when I open the document I get warnings of 63 duplicate markers that I have to click through to get to work on the document. Is there some way to suppress these warnings. Thanks.

We didn't really understand what the ultimate goal was that he wanted to achieve; we said:

The correct answer is that markers should be assigned in an intuitive meaningful way: for example, if you’re writing the Korteweg–de Vries equation, a sensible marker would be KdV. So the best solution is to correct each chapter to use unique (non-repeating) intuitive markers; this will be time-consuming but at 2 minutes each, 63 markers should take around 2 hours to correct.

If you are using arbitrary markers in each chapter such as ‘marker1’, ‘marker2’, then each individual chapter is going to have a ‘marker1’ and a ‘marker2’ etc. When multiple such chapters are incorporated into a single document then you will have duplicate markers. The question is then not just how to suppress the warning message, but how the cross-references to such marked equations can possibly resolve correctly: a cross-reference to marker X must cite a unique marker X. If there are 2 or 3 markers all called X, what is the cross-reference to X supposed to do?

We’re happy to think about it further if you let me know precisely what you’re trying to accomplish: how do you want the markers and cross references to work? Or are the markers now redundant as far as your current purpose goes?

He responded:

I will work through the 63 duplicates. Is there a way to search for all the markers. The find does not do this. Thanks again.

We replied:

We assume you know the names of the markers in question. If not:

Turn on View – Markers, which will show the names of the markers (= labels); see screenshot. Notice how the sample checkout document demonstrates precisely how not to choose an intuitive name for the equations: ‘one’, ‘two’. Or

Open the .tex file with WordPad and search (Ctrl-F) for \label.

You can then either correct them in Scientific WorkPlace using Go – ToMarker, or in WordPad.

Double-click: Someone still using v5.0 Emailed to say:

On one of my computers, but not the other, at one point I tried SW v.5.5. As a result, when I now click on my SW files, the file opens but the system tells me that the licence has expired and that I can no longer work with it. There is a way around it, namely to open the file by means of Open with, but I find this slightly annoying. I do not dare disinstall v5.5 from my computer altogether, for fear of cancelling some essential files.

In other words, installing the 30-day trial of v5.5 had reset the association for files of type .tex from Scientific Word v5.0 to Scientific Word v5.5; but when it tried to open Scientific Word v5.5 the 30-day trial had expired. We replied:

Yes, your 30-day trial of Scientific Word v5.5 expired a while ago. On the computer where you tried SW v5.5, we recommend you re-assign .tex files to be opened by Scientific Word v5.0. To do that:

On Windows 10: Start – Control Panel – Default Programs – Set your default programs – Choose default application by file type – .tex – Scientific Word 5.0

On Windows 11: Start – Settings – Apps – Default apps – .tex – Search – Scientific Word 5.0.

Alternatively you could upgrade from Scientific Word v5.0 to v5.5 on your machines. The additional features of v5.5 are shown at https://www.sciword.co.uk/v5-5.htm (but you will know this already from your 30-day trial).

Christmas arithmetic: Take A Christ out of Christmas and what have you got left?

       C    H    R    I    S    T    M    A    S
–      A        C    H    R    I    S    T
-----------------------------------------------------
               M    and    S

Curious to know more? Why not re-read our previous Christmas mailing items: December 2010 mailing Item 8; December 2011 mailing Item 7; December 2013 mailing Item 8; December 2014 mailing Item 8; December 2015 mailing Item 9; December 2017 mailing Item 6; December 2019 mailing Item 9; December 2020 mailing Item 4; December 2022 mailing Item 6.