New SE-Tools - formerly known as SE-Uploader

Question

I have completely revised our old SE-Uploader and finally finished putting all together in a package called the SE Tools. Therefore, we can now provide additional features because the SETools` can be loaded. Currently, the uploader palette is still the largest part of the software. I have put much effort in providing a very detailed description about how it works. The most obvious change is the new layout

which makes it clear that it is really a tool for Stack Exchange in general, rather than for our community only. Additionally, I have...

• ...included the possibility to share Cells and Notebooks as easy as you know it from the image upload. The expressions are encoded in the PNG images itself and sharing them is as easy as including an image in your post. Please read here the discussion about safety issues.
• ...revived the possibility to roll out updates and notify you when a better version is available. Every once in a while, or when you press the update button, your local version is compared with the online repository. If there is a new version, you will directly see a list of bullet-points about the latest changes and can update it directly.
• ...written an update/install procedure which works for Mathematica version 8 or above. This will replace old installations with the most recent version and update the whole package automatically. Unfortunately, there seems an issue for Windows users, which I'll explain later.
• ...not only changed the layout, but ensured that the uploader palette works and looks good even on version 8.

Installation and Update

The update routine can be found online in the repository and installing the SE Tools should be as simple as evaluating this file with

Import["http://goo.gl/rQtfHZ"]

The installer will check for old installations of SEUploader or SETools and asks you whether it can remove them. If your directories are clean, then it will download the latest version of the repository (the file master.zip), extract it and place it in your $UserBaseDirectory.

Attention Windows users: It seems, than Mathematica simply cannot delete certain files or directories, because it somehow locks them. If you get an error, although you clicked Yes when you were asked for approval to remove them, please delete the directory manually and report back here.

Known Issues

• there is a upload limit of 1MB when uploading Cells or Notebooks
• the above mentioned issue of being unable to remove certain files that are being used currently under Windows
• in version 8 there is unfortunately nothing like ProgressIndicator[Appearance -> "Indeterminate"] to get a constantly moving progress-indicator and I hesitate to use something with Dynamic[Clock[Infinity]]. Therefore, when uploading Cells/Notebooks in V8, only a progress-bar will appear and it will disappear when the upload is finished.

Please report all other issues that you find

Answer 1

TL;DR I fixed the flicker-bug of the SEUploader palette

---

Fix for the flicker-issue in OS X

On my OS X 10.10.3 with Mathematica 10 the palette flickered from time to time. I hat the feeling that the flicker appeared very often when I had a stackexchange chat-room with a lot of traffic open in Chrome.

Lately, I stumbled over an issue that seemed to be the cause for the flicker. In the SEUploader palette, I used a simple trick to hide the upload ProgressIndicator when the palette was idle:

Invisible[ProgressIndicator[...]]

I used the same specs for both, the visible and the invisible indicator to ensure that the palette layout does not move/resize when the indicator is shown during upload.

As it turned out, the invisible progress-indicator triggered a constant dynamic update. Therefore, some simple test revealed that

Manipulate[
 {s, ControlActive["Why so busy?", "Relaxed as always"]},
 {s, 0, 1}
]

was always busy when the SEUploader palette was open and it seemed to introduce some weird flickering of the palette under OS X.

I replaced the invisible indicator with an empty, static Graphics of the same dimension. The update can be downloaded and the current version is 127.

Answer 2

status-completed

I have a bug report: since recently, Stack Exchange is banning the use of the goo.gl address for the decoder. For some time I've been sharing notebooks by including the line

<sup> Mathematica code through Import["http:// goo.gl / NaH6rM"]["https://i.sstatic.net/wM9dN.png"]</sup>

under the image, in plain case (i.e. no backticks) because it's shorter (note the spaces on the goo.gl link: even here, in a code block, it's trouble). When editing an old answer today, however, I was met with the following behaviour:

This is a reasonable step on the side of Stack Exchange, but it does break the clean behaviour of the SE Uploader (i.e. you click 'upload notebook for site', paste the resulting text onto your answer, and presto). Maybe the mods here can persuade Stack Exchange to whitelist this specific link? (unlikely to go through, as it leads to crufty code, perhaps?) Or maybe a more descriptive URL can be found for this file?

Answer 3

This is a bug report about a plot that is not correctly uploaded.

I just updated the uploader by executing the above Import command (that I cannot reproduce here because of the shortened URL).

I have a notebook that only contains the following code:

g[x_, y_] := {x/(x^2 + y^2), -y/(x^2 + y^2)};
Manipulate[
 Show[
  ParametricPlot[{{Cos[t], Sin[t]}, {c, 10 t}}, {t, -Pi, Pi}, 
   PlotRange -> {{-5, 5}, {-5, 5}}],
  ParametricPlot[g[c, t], {t, -100, 100}] ],
 {{c, -1.5}, -3, 3}]

and generates this plot:

Now if I select the plot cell and click image I get an image with a missing circle:

The uploaded image is also missing the circle:

I am using MacOS 10.12.3 and Mathematica 11.0.1.0.