Using Mathematica remotely Why working without notebook? From a telnet terminal with no graphics In an X terminal From a terminal with graphics to create and publishing PDF documents

Interfaces can be a blessing but have disadvantages too: Operating system dependences. There can be problems with fonts for example. Annoying Sensitivity on the version of the software. Rigid interface (You are for example forced to use an other editor). The additional use of CPU and memory resources slow down computations. Effectivness: interfaces need time start up. Users need time to learn it.

When using Mathematica in a more serious way, for example to run processes over several days as batch jobs, parallel on differnet machines or together with other software like raytracing programs or C code, notebooks are not so effective.

For example, if some computation is expected to take some time and must be run as a batch job, you want to leave it running alone for a while without actually having to sit at the machine. An example of such a session is given in the following snapshot. It shows how we telnet to is02.fas.harvard.edu, start mathematica, perform a computation and logout.

While the machine computes you can go to drink some coffee. If you come back, the seven'th Fermat number 340282366920938463463374607431768211457 is factorized. The result is written in the file "result.out".

Last update: 9/16/2000

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