Missing Hourglass in V14 M030

[PhilipOakley]

I am just shifting my user community over from V11.2a to V14 M030. I hadn't noticed but the hourglass cursor has disappeared during long calculations. This means that users think that the data on the page they are viewing may not be up to date when mathCAD is still calculating some earlier information.

Is tehre a way of changing the setting so that users can see the hourglass cursor if they require?

Have others seen the same issue.

Philip

[MikeArmstrong]

I usually see a green border around the section which is currently being calculated, which indicates Mathcad is working through the sheet.

Mike

[RichardJ]

I have noticed this, and I know of no cure. I work on the principle that if the worksheet seems to be hung up, it's calculating something. Not exactly ideal!

[FDS]

The missing hourglass is indeed annoying but what annoys me even more is that this bug is not corrected in MC15 (F000) although advertising states that MC15 has less bugs...

[PhilipOakley]

Thanks everybody for confirming the issue. I think it is a design feature becaue they now independently thread the calculations and the display graphics editing. This supposedly means you can continue to edit and scan the document while it updates in the background.

Unfortunately if the green border (of the region being calculated) is currently off screen, you don't get immediate feedback as to what is happening, especially in long or slow worksheets - it just looks like it has hung !

The big question though is what feedback mechanism would best suit folks. The old hourglass was probably wrong in the new scheme because you don't need to wait to do editing, but you do want telling that it is still calculating - perhaps an icon of a calculator with buttons being pushed??, or some other indicator in the status bar to show that calculation is in progress (almost like the CPU load box that task manager uses).

Any thoughts of the best feedback indicator please. I'll raise a 'fault' / feedback report when a few have been gathered.

Philip

[RichardJ]

Philip Oakley wrote:

Thanks everybody for confirming the issue. I think it is a design feature becaue they now independently thread the calculations and the display graphics editing. This supposedly means you can continue to edit and scan the document while it updates in the background.

That's true. It's a good feature too.

The big question though is what feedback mechanism would best suit folks. The old hourglass was probably wrong in the new scheme because you don't need to wait to do editing, but you do want telling that it is still calculating - perhaps an icon of a calculator with buttons being pushed??, or some other indicator in the status bar to show that calculation is in progress (almost like the CPU load box that task manager uses).

Any thoughts of the best feedback indicator please. I'll raise a 'fault' / feedback report when a few have been gathered.

The status bar isn't big enough for an icon. How about just a progress bar that completes very quickly, but repeats until the caclulatoins are done?

[PhilipOakley]

Perhaps they could flash the Auto / Calc F9 status indicator at the bottom right.

(the one that tells you if you are in auto calc mode or need to press F9 to calculate )

(in green?, as a border, just like it does round regions?)

It is next to the NUM (Numeric lock on the keyboard) indicator and the Page number indicator.

[RichardJ]

How about "Calculating region n of N", where n is the current region number and N is the total number of regions. The text could be in flashing green so you would know if Mathcad was actually hung. It might also be better if the numbers did not include regions such as text and images that do not require calculation.

[TomGutman]

There are some combinatiion cursors for his sor of situation. An arrow (indcating that you cn seect items to work on) together with either an hourglass or lightbulb (indicating that the program is busy calculatng something. Been around for a long time.

[f.kohlhepp]

Philip Oakley wrote:

I am just shifting my user community over from V11.2a to V14 M030. I hadn't noticed but the hourglass cursor has disappeared during long calculations. This means that users think that the data on the page they are viewing may not be up to date when mathCAD is still calculating some earlier information.

Is tehre a way of changing the setting so that users can see the hourglass cursor if they require?

Have others seen the same issue.

Philip

I'm still in version 11. The lightbulb is gone?

[RichardJ]

The lightbulb is gone?

The lightbulb is dead. Long live the lightbulb!

Yes, it's gone. As Philip points out though, there is a good reason for that. You can now edit the worksheet while it's caclulating.

And you are correct, it is a lightbulb, not an hourglass. How come we all missed that?

[jeanGiraud]

My compute bulb has never failed Mathcad 11.2a.

When not blinking [OFF], just fetching virtual mem.