I fully sympathize with your post. We've been staying with 15.0 hoping that Prime would eventually get back to something we'd want to use, as we have an enormous load of calculations accumulated over nearly 26 years of Mathcad use - as my signature says, I've used Mathcad on an MS-DOS screen.
It truly saddens me - there must be something systemically wrong somewhere at PTC with regards to Mathcad development. I fired up Prime 5.0 today for just a few looks around, didn't even do the in-depth evaluation you did. For one, check out these same size screencaps of 15 and Prime 5.0:
You need to see these side-by-side to appreciate it better. But here are a few observations:
1. I can't close the search box at the bottom of the page
2. The ribbon obscures valuable vertical space.
3. At this width, the ribbon tab titles don't even show completely.
4. I have to work my way through the ribbon to find what I want.
5. I have two grid choices only (actually not relevant to a comparitive discussion, but this should be selectable in some fashion over a better range)
Contrast that with the 15.0 window where:
1. Almost everything I need is at my fingertips
2. I can set my margins all the way around instead of only 3 presets.
Then it got worse, and I'm sure others have noted some of these.
1. After 8 years of development, I cannot cut and paste from 15 to Prime.
2. So I tried it and got a picture. As long as I hit the Delete key on my keyboard while it was still highlighted, the Delete key worked; but if I clicked away and then re-selected it, the Delete key did not work; I had to go up to the ribbon and select "Delete region".
For 95% of what we do (read this: What many companies and people do, who would buy Mathcad for a truly great calculation environment, who don't have a PhD), 15 is a beautiful solution; as I near retirement, I have considered what I'm going to do as even then I can't imagine a computer without Mathcad on it.
And I hate to be a critic... I realize it's a whole lot easier to criticize code than to write it. But "faithful are the wounds of a friend". They evidently are not putting the resources needed into (what is now) "resurrecting" this application, or those resources are being aimed at the wrong goals. I think it may be both; with all these glaing problems and inadequacies, all that happened from 4.0 to 5.0 was the chart tool. I feel bad for somebody up at PTC who must be saying, "but guys, c'mon now...!"
I hate to give you bad news, but...
I started with Mathcad 3.1 (first Windows version, I think).
Starting with Mathcad 11 I was on an advisory group for Mathsoft (who also did not always listen, because if they had then static unit checking would never have happened!),
I helped write the Data Analysis Handbook
I was then on the PTC technical committee for Mathcad. I have sat in multiple meeting at the PTC facility. I was on first term names with the developers (was, because all the ones I knew either fled or were fired).
I was an alpha and beta tester for every version from 11 through Prime 4.0 (after which PTC cut me loose; I guess I was becoming too much of a complaining PITA
)
So I have a lot invested in Mathcad.
I have given up. Over the (wasted) years it has become very clear to me PTC has no interest in you, or me, or Werner, or anyone else posting to this thread. Think of it as a bolt-on tool for Creo, because it's never going to be much more than that, and as long as PTC owns it, it will never, ever, be up to par with Mathcad 15. Because that's not what they want.
That's why you don't see me around here any more. I use Prime for nothing, because it's a garbage piece of software. I use SMath for simpler calculations that it can handle (which is quite a lot). I use Mathcad 15 when I can't do it in SMath. Fortunately, I am close enough to retiring from full time science / engineering that I will probably be able to string Mathcad 15 out until the end. After that I will just continue with SMath.
Sorry to be so negative, but sometimes brutal honesty is the best policy.
