🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9610001@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM>, wayne@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Wayne Covington) writes:
> digennar@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov (Frank S. DiGennaro) asked for opinions
> on MathCad.  So in a further effort to provoke a response from any MathCad
> users out there ...
> 
 ...deleted...

	I've been using the DOS version since it came out and now use
Mathcad 3.1 for Windows/DOS and have recently purchased a Sun/SPARC
version (more on that later.)

>  If they are on version 3.1, it must have been around long enough
> to acquire a following.  

	I'm sure it has. Plenty of folks write for their newsletter.
It seems to appeal mostly to engineers rather than mathmaticians.

> Perhaps MathCad is shunned because its capabilities
> fall short of those of Maple, Mathematica, and other commonly mentioned
> computer algebra systems?

	Although MathCad 3.1 has a subset of Maple (which I don't
use), I don't think of it as a computer algebra system.  I mostly use
it for simple data analysis (when verifying the performance of data
acq systems), for documentation, and for tedious calculations that
have to get revisited from time to time.

	I like the "report" output format, except that there is no
automatic method for generation of headers/footers or page numbers.
The tool boxes and online help are great. The GUI user interface is
fairly good (except I don't like the fact that when it generates an
error, it points to it, but the cursor is somewhere else....

> Wayne

	Now for my question: Anyone sucessfully using MathCad 3.1 on a
Sun/Sparc running 4.1..  with Openwindows 3.0?  I can't edit in the
file selection boxes (not really a big deal), and I can't use any of
the CONTROL keys (such as CTL-6 to get a superscript) which makes it
nearly useless. I'm still trying to sort this out with the support
folks, but (in part because I was away) its not done yet.

-Dale

-- 
Dale Chayes
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Internet: dale@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu
Voice:    (914) 365-8434     Fax:  (914) 359-6940