MathCAD Prime 1.0 is a step back

When you purchase Prime you also receive a copy of Mathcad 15

Mike

Hi

As I see it, software development needs two basic aspects to make it work:

(a) It must do what it is intended to do using code that is as lean, mean and as fast as possible. This assumes the underlying processes and structure of the written software are sound etc.

(b) The user can work quickly and efficiently to get their work done. It is imperative there are no bottlenecks for the user. User time is valuable - human costs are high given salaries etc. Purchasing of software is usually a relatively low cost item in comparison. So user productivity in all its different guises is really important.

As much as possible needs to be done by the software manufacturer whilst still at their "factory". This includes periodically developing the software to meet changes in user needs.

Just because Microsoft decided to change its interface a few years ago in Office from the previous menu & toolbars etc to the ribbon, it does not mean that PTC needs to copy it. I regard the ribbon interface as being slower for the user than the previous interface due the greater number of movements by the user. This applies in Office as well as in PTC Prime. A mathematical programme is a specialist one and I suggest a user is quite prepared to accept a non-ribbon Microsoft lookalike if it makes the user happier and more efficient. At the least, I suggest PTC needs to enable user-adaptibility of the ribbon such as via palettes / toolbars etc.

Given I have used Mathcad (relying on v11 since when I started in 2003, having tried and not liked or been indifferent to the more recent versions), for whatever it seems to be worth, I do offer some of my time for testing etc. (I offered some time ago with Prime, but not accepted at the time by PTC as perhaps they had enough testers).

However, PTC has gained, maybe unfairly as I do not really know, a perception at least with me to be somewhat indifferent to users etc. Are PTC really interested by listening to users or are they just going their "own sweet way" irrespective. Has PTC really listened to all you guys who have contributed so much to the collaboratory, who I regard as being expert in Mathcad and you all have a high level of engagement to the product? Over the years, many good suggestions have been made for the Mathcad product but not that many have been actually implemented. That of course is PTC's prerogative as owner of the Mathcad / Prime product. But users do not have accept what they do either : they do not have to buy or upgrade to their latest product.

I object strongly to the ribbon. If Prime does not make it more user friendly then I shall not bother to even test the product. This as at stands now is a total deal breaker for me. I do not want to spend my time experimenting with Prime given the inefficiencies of the ribbon.

I am running a small consulting practice. I need to develop my programmes to cover my work requirements (which continue to get more complicated with each passing year) and I cannot wait another 2 years for Prime to get to a point where it replaces Mathcad. How much extra functionality will Prime have over Mathcad in 2 years time? That is a valid question. In addition, I absolutely must make more efficient use of my time and try to improve my productivity, irrespective of the mathematical software I use.

Money is a consideration, but not the only factor for me. As mentioned above, my work requirements and productivity are paramount for me. I have to be commercial. Whilst Mathcad was good for me in the past (and I preferred it over Maple and Mathematica), I now need something more than the current Mathcad. The other mathematical products have changed over time. So I have just decided to spend $2,500 and buy Mathematica. I truly do not want to re-write all my programmes etc, but I feel I have no choice given my particular circumstances. I know I will need to spend a lot of time upfront to learn it and write my new programmes, but I am hoping my productivity gains in the future will more than compensate for the immediate workload. Other users will have their own requirements so please note I am not trying to influence them: I am just presenting my own views.

Deep down, I always liked the Mathcad product, so I intend to keep Mathcad on the side for the time being and keep an eye on Prime as it develops. But I am really disappointed that so little has gone into the Mathcad product over recent years.

Regards

David

Yes I agree, MathCad Prime name certainly doesn't reflect its ability. In my view its certainly feels impoverished in comparison to MathCad 15. Yes it may have some new innovative features but can it get the job done? This in the end, is all that counts. It lacks so many features in comparision to MC 15 and so the answer to the later question is a definite NO.

The MS Office type tool bar is OK but formatting a document in my view is harder to do in MathCad Prime than in MC15. The look of the programming blocks with their horrible double vertical lines and the solve blocks with their vertical text which overlap and become unreadable is unappealing and amateurish. I even think that the way MathCad 15 implements imbedded excel worksheets is more intuitive - at least you can see the data that's contained in the excel worksheet without having to get properties on the link.

Yes, in my view, its certainly not ready for 'Prime Time" viewing.

Mark Buckton

Mike Armstrong wrote: Whilst there might have a few users who complained because it 'different' in some form, many of the longer term users complained because M12 represented a major drop in capability and had several annoying (and not particularly beneficial) incompatibilities with older versions (particularly M11). I fully understand the reasons for users complaining about M12 onwards. I still don't fully understand why PTC decided to change from dynamic unit checking.

PTC didn't. It was Mathsoft who decided to do that (well before the PTC buy-out). I don't know why they did, but there was certainly a perception amongst some of us that it was a (probably well-intentioned) attempt to protect naive users from either missing the fact that they'd made a mistake or having to find out what the mistake was only when the worksheet was exected. It has its uses and I've nothing against it in principle but only as a user worksheet option. It crippled far too many worksheets for negligible gain from an experienced user's perspective.

Back to your point, if you look back at the history of suggestions on the old Collaboratory, you will note that several of us wanted far more radical changes to Mathcad to give it the kind of capabilities that attract people to its rivals: programmable graphics, multi-dimensional arrays, symbolic manipulation of units, LaTex output, formatted strings (capable of display without quote marks), free-hand entry - even 'simple' things such as multiple windows onto a spreadsheet and automatic program line wrapping. The list is very long and many of the same requests have popped up from new users for over a decade. Some of the ideas could be implemented, and quickly distributed, as mpl files (eg, new functions). Stuart as you are one of the members on this site were I trust your comments a 100% I find the above worrying. Which way is Mathcad heading then. I agree that M15 could have been improved without much effort, well a lot less than it must have taken to create Prime.

Well, here's some evidence to back up my assertion:

http://communities.ptc.com/message/132568#132568

http://collab.mathsoft.com/read?112745,12

On 6/3/2008 1:30:06 PM, philipoakley wrote: == We have recently had the PTC / MuPad / V14 / Print Preview / M020 peice of rough track. I'm not sure these issues are relevant to determining what the key features are. I think most people implicitly expect a product not to crash or take intolerable lengths of time to run (Hi Valery!) == So I'm wondering what the readers feel are the fundamanetal feature and concepts we need to stick to if the product isn't to become a haphazard amalgam of irrelevant feature with the ones you want hidden behind a facade improvements. In no particular order ... The target user domain is a key factor in determining what the product should do. I believe that this domain should be as wider than simply 'engineering' (whatever that is, it covers a whole host of disciplines from the highly complex "Pass me that hammer would you" to the trivial "solar sail fly-by orbit" calculation). It should encompass physics, chemistry, biology, economics and 'basic' mathematics (eg, sets and tensors) as maths is the foundation of all the other disciplines. We've seen example of such usage across various domains in this Collaboratory. == A maths white board? with or without engineering? I think, therefore, that a 'non engineering (/science)' approach would kill the product. As http://collab.mathsoft.com/~Mathcad2000/read?112720,63 mentions, I believe that Mathcad should be viewed from several points of view to see what capabilities it should have. The Whiteboard The first viewpoint I take is that which led to the invention of Mathcad - The Whiteboard. The concept of the whiteboard has moved on over the years to the extent that it is common to encounter active (or at least semi-passive) whiteboards that allow the user to capture what's written on a PC, with automatic text recognition and vectorization routines that 'tidy up' drawings. It's not too difficult to extend the concept to a more active whiteboard that does this live (eg, a fast touch-sensitive screen + supporting tools, eg automatic or on-demand visual 'tidying up' with automatic interpretation). It should have a drag and drop capability, so that, say, a variable could be selected and dragged into a place holder, or a subset of a matrix could be selected and copy-dragged elsewhere. Now imagine yourself either thinking things through by yourself or giving a lecture/presentation and think what features you'd find useful in such an active whiteboard - that's what Mathcad should have, eg, quick text formatting without quotes, or the ability to choose either freehand drawing or the ability to pick from a palette of simple drawing tools. A major implication of this is that notation should be flexible to allow the maths Prof their Jν(x) whilst letting the 'programmer' enter J(n,x). Instantly, this means both left and right superscripts/subscripts and the ability to format them independently of the main name. Detailed Analysis/Implementation It's fairly easy to imagine that the Whiteboard is used to sketch out the design for some particular problem and get buy-in to progress to a more detailed analysis (eg, Whiteboard: "I've got this great idea for a new nozzle design! Here's the outline ..." followed by Detailed Analysis: "OK, looks promising. Flesh it out and generate some test data we can drop into the lab people."). This would be an extension of the Whiteboard with improved data presentation and more automated control over plots and animations, and access to their data/images. Documentation/Publication/Presentation The next stage, having done the donkey work and got some results back from the lab/production people, is to formally document it and/or prepare it for publication or presentation. This requires an additional set of tools, such enhanced text formatting, equation numbering, and style-guides (plus checkers) and layout enhancements, such as 2-column presentation. As you've mentioned elsewhere, the ability to output in pdf or LaTex format would be essential (built-in not bolted-on, so that, for example, default output file names would be automatically related to the worksheet name. I think all of the above are in keeping with PTC's (and Mathsoft as was) aim of having Mathcad at the heart of a one-stop calculation management system. Whilst I'm aware of the dangers of overkill (the UML saga referred to), there are a lot of capable and competent competitors out there and not doing enough is a much a killer as capability bloat.

http://collab.mathsoft.com/read?102673,12 (Sep 2007) Here's a summary of some feature requests, in no particular order Stuart 1. add plot component programming interface: … a. allow component to return complete parameter set (eg, as one nested array or by specific functions) … b. allow user to programmatically set parameters (eg, pass back complete parameter set or by specific function) … c. add capability to return plot image … d. add capability to return plot data (eg, surface co-ordinates) … e. see threads: 2. http://collab.mathsoft.com/read?94485,12 (worksheet shows potential for enhancement using (undocumented) 3D plot component to set titles, define axes, etc) 3. http://collab.mathsoft.com/read?58646,12 (original request) 4. add multi-dimensional array capability, should: … a. support hyper-rectangular arrays … b. provide ragged nested array index support … c. have an empty array … d. support tensor operations … e. should support tensor notation (eg superscript) … f. accept string input and provide string output of array values (for example of this see http://collab.mathsoft.com/read?74389,11 ) 5. add set support (eg, array to set, set inclusion, set join) 6. provide mnemonic names for functions defined as operators (eg, '+' available as 'add') 7. enhance definition and display capability: … a. provide keyboard shortcuts for prefix, infix, postfix and tree operators … b. allow user to replace standard operator symbols with other function names (eg, 2+3 could become 2 div 3) … c. allow tree display of nested vectors … d. convert expression between Mathcad and 'standard' programming string (eg, MuPad, Excel or C) 8. enhance symbolic capability: … a. allow deferred evaluation (useful for passing expressions to functions rather than trying to evaluate them first) … b. allow user to create names programmatically (eg, string to variable, so could write a:=3, b:=4, c:=a+var("b"), where var provides the conversion) 9. allow direct access to region properties (including values) 10. see thread starting at message http://collab.mathsoft.com/read?66893,77 11. provide multiple views onto a worksheet (eg, similar to MS Excel's multiple windows or split view (top/bottom) 12. provide automatic region numbering schemes (eg, global paragraph numbering, equation/figure/table numbering) 13. allow programmatic access to a component's script (both read and write) 14. allow direct means of viewing a component's script (ie, without opening it) 15. provide symbol concordance 16. (to support the latter 2 features, provide a view onto the worksheet that lists all 'hidden' attributes (such as ORIGIN, TOL or default result settings) 17. improve page breaks to avoid splitting text over a page break (particularly wrt programs) 18. provide rectangular area / sub-worksheet capability 19. ability to extend Mathcad by adding worksheets / e-books as libraries in a similar way to extension packs, rather than having to 'include' them. 20. provide programmatical control of animation (in addition to the clunky and ancient dialog method) 21. add subvector function to complement submatrix (I use my subvector implementation fairly frequently) 22. add 'sequences' as a proper data type that the user can define outside of a for-loop definition and can use in place of a range (as a range is a sub-type of a sequence). 23. formalize and make available the Mathsoft Programming Language.

and here's a link to the Multi-Dimensional Array library I posted in 2004 to show how easy it would be to implement even a basic capability ...

http://collab.mathsoft.com/read?62589,11