February 2026 mailing – Scientific Word Ltd.

Support continuing to 2030: In our June 2021 mailing Item 2 we committed to continue providing our Unbeatable Expert Technical Support and Training for the following 5 years; and in our April 2024 mailing Item 1 we extended that from 2026 until 2028.
We are now further extending our commitment until 2030 – with no intention that we'll necessarily stop then either. Business as usual!

L^aT_eX 2.09: (see also our February 2015 mailing Item 2)
An Italian user with Individual Annual Maintenance Emailed asking:

...do I have to worry about the following message:

(c:\sw50\TCITeX/tex/latex/base/latex209.def
File: latex209.def 1998/05/13 v0.52 Standard LaTeX file
Entering LaTeX 2.09 COMPATIBILITY MODE
*************************************************
!!WARNING!! !!WARNING!! !!WARNING!! !!WARNING!!

This mode attempts to provide an emulation of the LaTeX 2.09
author environment so that OLD documents can be successfully
processed. It should NOT be used for NEW documents!

New documents should use Standard LaTeX conventions and start
with the \documentclass command.

Compatibility mode is UNLIKELY TO WORK with LaTeX 2.09 style
files that change any internal macros, especially not with
those that change the FONT SELECTION or OUTPUT ROUTINES.

Therefore such style files MUST BE UPDATED to use
Current Standard LaTeX: LaTeX2e.
If you suspect that you may be using such a style file, which
is probably very, very old by now, then you should attempt to
get it updated by sending a copy of this error message to the
author of that file.
*************************************************

We replied:

LaTeX 2.09 is the very old form of LaTeX, which was superseded by LaTeX 2e in 1994. If you were starting a new document today you would use the current LaTeX 2e. I noticed your document was using LaTeX 2.09 but decided not to comment: if your document is producing the PDF you want, what is the incentive to change?

Is it motivated by co-authors?

Is it motivated by publishers of a journal to which you want to submit your paper?

Should you convert your LaTeX 2.09 document to LaTeX 2e?

In theory, there is no guaranteed conversion process for the general case: see https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/30128/how-to-convert-latex-2-09-to-latex2e [search for 'conversion'].

In practice, we have often been successful in converting from LaTeX 2.09 to LaTeX 2e: see our February 2015 mailing Item 2.

If you decide to convert your document from LaTeX 2.09 to LaTeX 2e, you could try:

Starting a new (LaTeX 2e) document in Scientific WorkPlace (File – New) and then using File – Import Contents to bring the body of your old LaTeX 2.09 document in to the LaTeX 2e template. Or alternatively:

Opening your .tex file with WorkPad and manually making the changes outlined at https://math.berkeley.edu/~vojta/tex/latex2e.html and [those indicated by Google when you search "convert latex 2.09 to latex 2e" using AI mode]

Apart from the time and effort involved, there is no downside to attempting the conversion: always keep multiple backups of your document, and if the conversion is not successful you can simply revert to using the old LaTeX 2.09 form.

We hope this is helpful. You have not been charged for this Tech Support as you have 12-months’ Individual Annual Maintenance giving complimentary Tech Support <snip>, subject to our Fair Use Policy. Do please let us know if you have any other questions.

Alternatively we can do this work for you, converting your LaTeX 2.09 documents into LaTeX 2e; see our paid Support Options.

Producing HTML: With the closure of MacKichan Software, the external files required for creating HTML files from Scientific Word/WorkPlace v6 stopped being available. And so – even if you carefully followed the instructions in our February 2019 mailing Item 3 – your uploaded HTML files would look more like Failed HTML Export than Successful HTML Export (the easiest tell-tale is the presence or absence of the blue titles and background).
Accordingly, we followed our own instructions in our December 2024 mailing Item 8 to retrieve the required files that were lost Way Back when, and uploaded those .css files to our own website. We then edited the February 2019 mailing Item 3, giving in red the new instructions for editing the .css file produced when creating HTML (.xhtml) documents.

Left subscript: An academic from America Emailed asking:

What is a good way to get left subscripts in SWP5.5.

We replied:

See the document attached [the .tex file and PDF]. To create the displayed subscripts we entered:

Ctrl-D for display; A; x; Ctrl-down arrow for subscript; 3; spacebar to return to the main line; or

Ctrl-D for display; Ctrl-down arrow for subscript; 3; spacebar to return to the main line; A; x.

Build 2960: A user Emailed from Down Under asking:

When I recently installed SWP 5.5 onto my new Win 11 machine I realized that it is Build 2953, whereas on my old Win 10 machine the Build is 2960.
The serial number provided with the CD is 403-E0600-<snip>, and the legend says v5.5E Scientific Workplace, Permanent.
I hope this supplies sufficient information for you to determine if I can download the most recent version of SWP Ver 5.5.

We replied:

It sounds like your distribution CD is only Build 2953; the Build No. is probably printed on the face of the CD. Please see our October 2024 mailing Item 7 (final section) which gives you a link to our Download page from which you can download Build 2960, together with a link to the v5.5 installation instructions. We strongly recommend you follow the installation instructions precisely

clarifying that he would need to use his serial number at Step 3 of the v5.5 installation instructions. He further asked:

Can I install SWP 5.50 Build 2960 over the top of build Build 2953, or do I need to delete Build 2953 first?

and we recommended:

Yes you can; but I recommend that instead you first rename c:\swp55 to (for example) c:\swp55bak so that you retain the old version just in case.

See also our January 2024 mailing Items 5 and 8(3); and our August 2025 mailing Item 2.

Administrator rights: This one is unusual. A prospective user was dragging his feet, never getting round to the installation. Initially we reassured him, saying:

If you have not yet Registered/Activated your Scientific WorkPlace 30-day trial (Steps 4 to 8 of the v5.5 installation instructions or Step 6 of the v6 installation instructions) then your 30 days has not started counting yet. We hope this is helpful; do please let us know if you have any other questions.

But it later transpired that:

I have pushed installing in front of me because doing so seems to take more than 5 mins which is the time allotted when I invoke administrator rights on my laptop (!) as required by computer support at my school. The school generously provides me with a laptop, but it's pretty much locked down security wise. So to install the test version I seem to need to sit down with a person from the computer support team to have that period prolonged.

We wrote:

If you can’t Run-as-Administrator then all bets are off (ie. it probably won’t work). See our February 2013 mailing Item 5 and August 2024 mailing Item 4.

The last we heard:

System administrators extended the installation window from (normally) 5 minutes to 40 minutes, so it should actually now be possible for me to install the software uninterrupted by a plethora of system security measures

but we're not confident that this one ended well.

Natbib citations: (for the background to this, please see our April 2025 mailing Item 4)
The user came back to us with the question:

I use natbib for citations. Is there a way of changing the cite styles within SW55? I know how to do it in the latex file. Fragment file?

Initially we said:

Yes, you can control most aspects of how natbib handles the citations from Typeset – Options and Packages – Package Options – natbib – Modify, and then clicking the particular aspect on the left of the dialog and your choice for that aspect on the right. For example: Punctuation for citations – Square brackets.
<snip>
You will also find it helpful to re-watch module 6-4.Natbib (3m1s) of our Training Course videos...

He responded:

What I was looking for was a switch from say author year to year only while I’m in scientific word writing.

We replied:

To change the citation to Year only in Scientific Word you use a similar method to the change between Author [Year] and [Author Year] outlined in [our April 2025 mailing Item 4]: just put a line in the Typeset – Preamble saying
\let\cite=\citeyear
For completeness:

\let\cite=\citet gives Konemann [1981]

\let\cite=\citep gives [Konemann, 1981]

\let\cite=\citeyear gives 1981

\let\cite=\citeauthor gives Konemann

depending on the shape of the brackets selected.

You can add these commands either in the Typeset – Preamble, or in TeX Fields (Insert – Typeset Object – TeX Field) throughout the document.

v6 log file: A user wanted help with Scientific WorkPlace v6, writing:

I installed SWP today and found that I am not able to generate PDF files. It keeps giving me a message it is making pass 1 of 1 and then stops
<snip>
I came across this page https://www.sciword.co.uk/mailings/December2019.htm#7, asking me to save the main.log file on Notepad and send it to you. So here it is in the attachment. It seems that it is an .xhtml file, but the code opens up when opened with Notepad.
I am no expert with computers so I am not sure what I have missed or done wrong. Will you be able to help out? SWP is a great software that I have used for many years, and it will be nice if I can continue using it.

We replied:

We are not able to diagnose the type of error from the .xhtml file you sent <snip> you would need to send us the log file, please. To do this,

Create (or open) your Scientific WorkPlace v6 document (eg. D:\Documents\SWPDocs\Test.sci)

Try to compile it with PDFPreview

While the document is still open in Scientific WorkPlace, use File Explorer to go to D:\Documents\SWPDocs\Test_work\tex\ and copy the file main.log somewhere else (eg. to the Desktop). Note that the folder D:\Documents\SWPDocs\Test_work\ will be lost when you close the document in Scientific WorkPlace

Please send us main.log.

The steps above closely follow our December 2019 mailing Item 7 (where, additionally, there are screenshots of the steps).

Buyback: Have you retired? Left the University? Or are you now using a different program for writing your documents? We are still buying back no-longer-used Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Notebook licences, as described on our Buyback page. Do drop us an Email...

\let\cite=\citet	gives	Konemann [1981]
\let\cite=\citep	gives	[Konemann, 1981]
\let\cite=\citeyear	gives	1981
\let\cite=\citeauthor	gives	Konemann