riddle@mathcs.emory.edu (Larry Riddle) (05/02/91)
I recently purchased the program PSMathGraphsII for the Macintosh
for preparing mathematical plots and diagrams for my classes and papers.
I saw a demo of the program at the meeting of the American Math Society
in San Francisco in January and it has just been officially released
within the past month.
PSMathGraphsII is described by its creator as "an easy to use program
for preparing accurate, high quality mathematical and scientific type
diagrams." To use it you first specify a layout size for the diagram.
You can then specify what should be done with the x and y axis, whether
tick marks should be drawn, if numerals should be placed along the axes
and at which tick marks. You can then plot graphs of functions, graphs
of polar coordinate functions, graphs of parametrized curves, direction
fields, vector fields, and histograms. You can combine as many of these
objects as you need. You can also create diagrams with shaded regions
between a curve and the x axis or between two curves, or inside a
polygon. You can specify points to plot along a graph or draw a
tangent line at a specified point. All objects can be drawn with
different colors or gray scales if you want, or at different line
widths. The program will also draw solution curves to differential
equations and to autonomous 2x2 systems of differential equations.
A postscript language description of the diagram is generated when you
save a file or copy the drawing to the clipboard. You can paste the
diagram into a word processor and have it print using the postscript
code for very nice looking output. You can also save the file in EPS
form or Adobe Illustrator form, in which case you can then fine tune
the diagram or edit it using Illustrator or Freehand. I haven't tried
this latter option since I don't own Adobe Illustrator, but apparently
many of the beta testers used the program in just this way to produce
diagrams for textbooks. I've been using it with Word to produce
diagrams for my exams, homework problems, and class notes.
While many of these same objects could also be drawn using a program
like Mathematica, this program only costs $79.99 and is very easy to
use. The program is available from MaryAnn Software, 53 Los Pinos,
Nicasio, CA 94946. Telephone is 415-662-2486. The programmer's name is
John Jacob. I believe a demo disk is available for about $5 which can
be applied to the purchase price. If you call or write, tell John you
read about the program on Usenet.
If you have questions about the program, please email them to me and I
will try to answer as best I can.
Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in this program and only met
John Jacob for 15 minutes at the math meeting in January. I have been a
satisfied user of the program, however, and would like to see John
succeed in this venture so that he will be able to continue adding new
features to the program.
Larry Riddle | riddle@mathcs.emory.edu PREFERRED
Agnes Scott College | {rutgers,gatech}!emory!riddle UUCP
Dept of Math | riddle@emory.bitnet NON-DOMAIN BITNET
Decatur, GA 30030 | (404) 371-6222 AT&T
--
Larry Riddle | riddle@mathcs.emory.edu PREFERRED
Agnes Scott College | {rutgers,gatech}!emory!riddle UUCP
Dept of Math | riddle@emory.bitnet NON-DOMAIN BITNET
Decatur, GA 30030 | (404) 371-6222 AT&T