Observation:

When editing an embedded formula (math region) inside a text region, then there seems to be no way to leave the math region and go on typing text in the surrounding region. Instead, with cursor down or up, the entire text region is left.
You then have to go back with the mouse.

Also, there seems to be no way to enter an embedded math region just using the keyboard. You have to click the math region with the mouse.

Are there any hotkeys (how about Ctrl-Arrow or Alt-Arrow to enter or leave an embedded formula from/to surrounding text region?

I don't vote for math region in text.
Mathsoft demonstrated, I have used it few times for poof.
125000 Mathsoft Collaboratory, never used except myself.
Some math stuff may not be compatible in text region.

Wrote

When editing an embedded formula (math region) inside a text region, then there seems to be no way to leave the math region and go on typing text in the surrounding region.

Use Enter keyboard button. Enter always allows to quit from Region edit mode (both in standard mode and in embedded mode).

Wrote

Also, there seems to be no way to enter an embedded math region just using the keyboard. You have to click the math region with the mouse.

Are there any hotkeys (how about Ctrl-Arrow or Alt-Arrow to enter or leave an embedded formula from/to surrounding text region?

Will correct this behavior so using left/right buttons one can go inside/outside embedded Region.

Thank you!

Wrote

I don't vote for math region in text.
Mathsoft demonstrated, I have used it few times for poof.
125000 Mathsoft Collaboratory, never used except myself.
Some math stuff may not be compatible in text region.

Jean, I'm just following my plan of SMath project growth.

One of the most exciting parts is to provide better experience of creating documents with real calculations inside. Not like in Mathcad where all parts of the document positioned absolutely and have no any logical relationship between elements. And not like in MS Word where everything is very convenient but all the formulas are just for visual representation.
I'm talking about taking the best from these two approaches: convenient document layout where everything positioned relatively and automatic calculation of equations and plots written inside.

This way of evolution is pretty obvious if you look into plug-in like Writer Region which is small but a pretty powerful text processor. If we could allow Writer Region to insert standard equations and calculate them with all the possibilities available in SMath Studio today the main idea could be a reality.

So the first step from my side was to introduce visual representation of the worksheet like a document in text processor with headers/footers page numbers etc. It was done successfully.
The second step is to provide simple and convenient API to insert any supported Region inside another Region, so existing plug-ins could use this API. This work is in progress now.
Third step is to release new program called SMath Writer (?) which will have no any Regions - just a document with pages and cursor. You can write text and add equations like you do it in MS Word with one exception - all math is automatically calculated there.

Something good about this idea is that:
- every single bit of code (core and plug-ins) will be reused in both SMath Studio and SMath Writer (?), so both programs will continue living happy together;
- if SMath Writer (?) will have a success it will help a project itself;
- we will introduce new way of working with documents which contains calculations inside;
- the whole work is pretty doable and logical;
- damn, why not?!?!

So we are in the middle of our way, and what you see now is just a first attempt to use new features in real life. Yes, there are plenty of bugs (as always) and something is not very convenient to use, but it is a progress and now we can do something which was absolutely impossible to do 1-2 years ago. Let's see...

Best regards, Andrey Ivashov.

Wrote

- damn, why not?!?!

The children region is very good idea, keep up on your intentions.
For example, I had asked for editable description text (font, color, border, etc) and this feature will satisfy my demand.
One shall be able to write a simple book (or complicated, who knows) just in Smath for example, without using anything.

Regards

Wrote

Wrote

I don't vote for math region in text.
Mathsoft demonstrated, I have used it few times for poof.
125000 Mathsoft Collaboratory, never used except myself.
Some math stuff may not be compatible in text region.

Jean, I'm just following my plan of SMath project growth.

...
Third step is to release new program called SMath Writer (?) which will have no any Regions - just a document with pages and cursor. You can write text and add equations like you do it in MS Word with one exception - all math is automatically calculated there.

Something good about this idea is that:
- every single bit of code (core and plug-ins) will be reused in both SMath Studio and SMath Writer (?), so both programs will continue living happy together;
- if SMath Writer (?) will have a success it will help a project itself;
- we will introduce new way of working with documents which contains calculations inside;
- the whole work is pretty doable and logical;
- damn, why not?!?!
...

Hello Andrey,

I am not quite sure why new SMath Writer (?). The SMath (Mathcad) files are meant to be live and to reside as electronical books with live calculations. I've seen some Mathcad Handbooks printed on paper and this is just a waste of paper in my opinion.

On the other hand, the Reference book feature in SMath has not been improved significantly for years. There is only one book there made by Martin Kraska. In my opinion the rather old Mathcad Handbook option is still working much better than the Reference book in SMath. I appreciate the Martin's efforts of maintaining this book very much and I think he mentioned few times how to improve this. I hope he will comment about it once more.

Best Regards,
Radovan

Wrote

Wrote

Wrote

I don't vote for math region in text.

Jean, I'm just following my plan of SMath project growth.

...
Third step is to release new program called SMath Writer (?) which will have no any Regions - just a document with pages and cursor. You can write text and add equations like you do it in MS Word with one exception - all math is automatically calculated there.

Something good about this idea is that:
- every single bit of code (core and plug-ins) will be reused in both SMath Studio and SMath Writer (?), so both programs will continue living happy together;
- if SMath Writer (?) will have a success it will help a project itself;
- we will introduce new way of working with documents which contains calculations inside;
- the whole work is pretty doable and logical;
- damn, why not?!?!
...

Hello Andrey,

I am not quite sure why new SMath Writer (?). ...

My experience with software is that the user experience depends on four aspects:
- functionality
- user interface
- documentation
- support

Free software frequently has severe deficiencies in one or more of these aspects.
Andrey seems to be committed to functionality, user interface and support. Therefore, I tried to contribute to documentation. I really don't favour handbooks (paper or pdf) but rather would prefer some built-in access to doc/help. You could say that the need for a written handbook always is a deficiency of the UI. Have you ever read a handbook for a smartphone app? That's what people expect nowadays.
Yet I maintain the pdf handbook. This is in german (for my students) but I have seen that rather good automatic translations are possible (yet I did not manage to reproduce that).

Some of you might remember that the first steps of the interactive handbook were based on reverse engineering of the built-in math reference manual. This required a painful lot of xml-source editing and was merely a concept demonstrator.

Later, when Andrey added some features and with the text region utilities by Davide, the situation improved a lot. I won't repeat the feature requests here, they are stored in the bug tracking system. I probably will resume maintenance of the interactive book, if there is a better and obvious access to it from within SMath Studio and a working navigation infrastructure is available. At least, the new embedded region feature will help to make better documentation.

This feature

As to the Writer/Studio question:

As far as I understood, SMath Studio was meant as an application for building SMath Viewer application. As it turned out, just a small fraction of users actually generate Viewer applications but use SMath Studio as Mathcad substitute for creating self-documenting computer-aided calculation sheets. These freqently are prepared for third party readers, who should be able to comprehend them just from the printout.

To be honest, I require my students to hand in home work as SMath Studio PDF export. They might use whatever version of SMath and I just don't have the time to solve the related issues just for reviewing homework.

The concept of SMath Writer seems to adress this use case. Yet, you probably can't expect a thesis-like document to be exported to a usable Viewer executable. So Studio/Writer just might reflect focus on the respective use cases.

I don't know if Studio and Writer really need to have distinct GUIs. We shall see...

Radovan,

Wrote

I am not quite sure why new SMath Writer (?).

For me answer is pretty simple:



I want you to think about this new feature/program as a simple alternative to standard approach (the current one) for people who do not know anything about Mathcad and SMath Studio but have an experience to work with Word (from school, university, business). There are many cases when document contains more text then formulas, so using text processors is more convenient.

Regards.

Wrote

I don't know if Studio and Writer really need to have distinct GUIs. We shall see...

This is a good question. Initially I just planned to extend File>New menu so a small dialog to appear and ask about type of the document to be created: legacy or a new one.

Plan was changed because I've realized that these two types of documents are for different users and will have different storage formats (note that the whole document is a single Region and you can easily change paper format, margins and everything will be repositioned automatically).

But it is still debatable...

Regards.

Wrote

Radovan,
I want you to think about this new feature/program as a simple alternative to standard approach (the current one) for people who do not know anything about Mathcad and SMath Studio but have an experience to work with Word (from school, university, business). There are many cases when document contains more text then formulas, so using text processors is more convenient.

Regards.

So the new feature of text regions with embedded math or other regions is just an intermediate step towards the Writer?
You introduce a linear line structure where the breaks are just for formatting. As your first example above shows, this is much more natural to read than the current upper left corner based execution sequence.

Will we still have the freedom to put regions wherever we want? I think of math regions for annotation of sketches. There should be a way for logical grouping.

There have been attempts to write Open Office Plugins, which provide an active math region with whole-document scope of variables.
The UI was a nightmare but the concept seemed to be smart. It avoids re-inventing the text processor features but also makes you dependent on the API of the underlying software.
http://ooo-imath.sourceforge.net

Wrote

Will we still have the freedom to put regions wherever we want? I think of math regions for annotation of sketches. There should be a way for logical grouping.

Why should we give up a great feature (arranging regions where ever we want) for another great one? Why both of them can't stay with same approach presented in this version?

Regards

Martin,

Wrote

So the new feature of text regions with embedded math or other regions is just an intermediate step towards the Writer?

Yes. This feature was introduced to make Writer possible. But this is something always requested by users for Studio as well (to be able to insert Math Regions into the text and text wrapping). As you see everything is done for Writer is also very welcome for Studio (pages layout, header/footer, background, fields, embedded Regions, etc). In future we will have document structure with automatically generated table of content (TOC) and other features of text processor. Everything will be available both in Studio and Writer.

Wrote

Will we still have the freedom to put regions wherever we want?

Yes, in Studio, as it always was. For Writer I'm not ready to say, but we can do what is convenient. Our power is that we own 100% of code and there is no any restrictions from somewhere - we can do what we think is best for the project.

Wrote

There should be a way for logical grouping.

BTW, about logical grouping. As we now have embedded Regions sooner or later I will add a Group Region which can contain other Regions positioned absolutely (Studio style), so that all these Regions will have some common properties and will be connected to each other (within a group). This will also provide interesting possibilities for both Studio and Writer.

Wrote

There have been attempts to write Open Office Plugins, which provide an active math region with whole-document scope of variables.
The UI was a nightmare but the concept seemed to be smart. It avoids re-inventing the text processor features but also makes you dependent on the API of the underlying software.
http://ooo-imath.sourceforge.net

Thank you, did not know about it. But you see, it is a plug-in for something else, while Writer will be created for this exact application! Hope this makes sense.

Best regards.

Wrote

Jean, I'm just following my plan of SMath project growth.

...
Third step is to release new program called SMath Writer (?) which will have no any Regions - just a document with pages and cursor. You can write text and add equations like you do it in MS Word with one exception - all math is automatically calculated there.

Hello Martin,
By reading your project growth, I see myself working in my former OriginLab 6.0. Some limitations were observed
from RTF stuff. Otherwise: great feature.

Andrey -

You might find Tekla TEDDs interesting in their approach. Its an add-on to MS Word to 'do math'.

Its been around for a while, I tried it ~ 20 years ago when it first came out. It was not very technical math at the time. I stayed with Mathematica then switched to MathCAD then SMAth and have stayed since.

https://www.tekla.com/products/tekla-tedds

I would suggest that you have a look at their propaganda for their implementation and execution. You might find it interesting.

sinneD