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Ninetrees3-Newcomer
3-Newcomer
April 25, 2010
Question

First impressions

  • April 25, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 5395 views
Well, I admit that I have just begun to test the alpha version, but it doesn't seem to me that much has been fixed since the 'beta'.

Rich
http://www.downeastengineering.com/

2 replies

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PhilipLeitch1-Visitor
1-Visitor
April 27, 2010
I disagree. I don't think it's "much" different - but I can definatly see differenes.

There are many more functions and features. They all are like easter eggs - hidden away for you to find.

PolyfitC, PCAeigenvals, Anova and similar are nice little inclusions. The Design of Experiments might be handy... I would have to hold off until I saw some more "fleshed out" examples.

The programming was a little difficult to get the hang of but seems to perform very well.

It is also far more stable - though why they don't throw application wide error trapping around it is beyond me.

The plotting seems far more complete, but I can only do so much with 2D.

I thought symbolics was going to be excluded. Am I wrong in thinking that the attached image is symbolics?

Philip
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Nobody can hear you scream in Euclidean space.
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PhilipLeitch1-Visitor
1-Visitor
April 27, 2010
One other point - while it is a little faster than the "beta" - I'm still finding it slugish when clicking around the page or entering/altering values.

For instance, if I point and click near the top of the page, pull the mouse down to the bottom of the page and click again, then go back to the top and click again. I can easily do that second click at the the top before Prime has moved the cursor to the bottom.

If I repeat that over and over it ends up just bouncing the pointer around the top clicks, ignoring the bottom ones (or visa versa).

Clicks into formula feel like "Click... and... done". I think it's about a 1/2 second delay to get into a formula.

Other times it is faster - but most of the time it is about that.

And the ribbon is much the same. I press on a drop down and it almost instantly shows me a ghost image of options... then pauses... then shows the options. I'm guessing the "Fade in" stuff is just too slow. Don't bother fading, just show the silly thing instantly.

I've attached examples of this - I don't feel that it should pause long enough for me to take a screen shot of it doing this!

Philip
___________________
Nobody can hear you scream in Euclidean space.
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ptc-15176011-Visitor
1-Visitor
April 27, 2010
Philip,

You said you thought that MP1A1 was much more stable than the previous beta -- but in my recent experience, this is not the case.

I installed MP1A1 on a machine with WinXP Home and typed in the essentials of an existing Mathcad 11 worksheet that has a simple example of programming.

This worksheet reads two matrices of comma-separated values via READCSV, then defines and executes a function. The worksheet saves O.K. and loads O.K. But with it I am getting a lot of system freezes that remind me of the behavior of my old Performa Mac with OS 8.1. That is, the cursor simply freezes and ignores cursor movement or keyboard stimuli. With all of these freezes, it is possible to recover with Ctrl-Alt-Delete. But Ctrl-Alt-Delete causes the machine to reboot after a few seconds of dark screen, without presenting the Task Manager window.

Is anyone else experiencing these system freezes with MP1A1?

Roger Mansfield
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GuyB1-Visitor
1-Visitor
April 28, 2010
On 4/25/2010 9:12:57 PM, woodwise wrote:
>... it doesn't seem
>to me that much has been fixed
>since the 'beta'.

If nothing else, the ability to write real programs makes this a different beast.

I've been struggling with the simplest stuff for the past couple hours, so I'm not going to leap to the defense of this product.

But at least I'm not forced to rely on PTC's opinion of what functions I can access.

- Guy
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Ninetrees3-NewcomerAuthor
3-Newcomer
April 28, 2010
I think that some progress has been made, and I appreciate the effort to include new features. But nearly 30s to start up (M' and Help) v M14 @ maybe 8s or so, the arcane keystrokes to exit a programming block (I had to highlight the last line, including the ||, and then hit Shift-Enter), and the always frustrating return to M', seeing blinking cursor, and beginning to type, only to see nothing. If I am in a math region, editing is actually active, but the M' response is so slow that I am frequently thinking that I am NOT in edit mode, and this is further confused by the fact that if I return to M' after visiting another window, and I am in an 'indeterminate' state in M', then I must click on the page to begin editing. That wouldn't be so annoying during testing (needs to be fixed before release, IMO), but it causes me to wonder, when the M' response is delayed after a keystroke, whether I am entering anything...

Still, I was just expressing my frustration. In order to include new stuff, PTC had to let some of these other items, some of which were addressed in the 'beta', to fall by the wayside. This is, after all, alpha testing; but I wonder what PTC thinks it will deliver for M' 1.0...

Rich
http://www.downeastengineering.com/
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PhilipLeitch1-Visitor
1-Visitor
April 29, 2010
Apparently the speed issue (which also affects me) isn't affecting everyone.

Also - RE Functions, I'm finding that I'm getting the hang of it and it isn't too difficult. I'm that I'm just pressing "Enter" rather than "Shift+Enter" to add new lines.

I just wish I knew how to add errors (raise errors/exceptions).

Philip
___________________
Nobody can hear you scream in Euclidean space.
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