

Copyright (C) Tommy Pylant ssn 423942832.
May 1996, addendum May 31, 1997...
and June 6, 1997 and November 24 1997.
All Rights Reserved. Work in Progress.

This is MathGraph 2.5 with the fix for the Help file.
WYSIWYG window printing, Save to bitmap, and a Recent
File list have been added.
 
To install this software just unzip it and copy the directory
Mathgf25 to either the C: drive or a temporary directory.
The important thing is that the disk1,disk2, and disk3 be in 
the same directory. Then go to the Disk1 directory and double 
click the Setup.exe icon. This will take you through the setup 
routine. Be sure and quit ALL other programs before the install.
After installation, when running MathGraph 2.5 for the 
first time, you'll see the black dos screen come up for a few 
seconds. This is because the program is registering the helper.ocx
control with your systems registry. When through, you'll see
a message box telling you that the ocx control is registered.
if you don't see the message box, minimize or close MathGraph
and close the message box from there. You won't ever see the
message box again unless you reload your operating system.
When MathGraph 2.5 runs the first time, it looks for a file
int he windows system directory called mathgf2.str. If this
file is not found, the program will register the ocx control.
As long as this file is present, MathGraph 2.5 will not
run the ocx installation procedure. Also when Setup runs, 
another file is created in the C:\Windows\System directory.
This file is MPath.txt. This file has the working directory
for MathGraph 2.5 in it. If this file is removed, you will have
to access the help file by using the open file dialog box to
move to the \hlp directory. Once in the \hlp directory, click
cancel to close the dialog box and try accessing the help file.
if you have windows installed to another drive besides the C:
drive, you will have the same problem, plus possibly some problems
with the Recent File List. It IS ok to install MathGraph 2.5 to 
another drive besides the C: drive.If you have a previous version
of MathGraph installed, either the version 2.0 or 2.1,
Uninstall them with the Control Panel Add/Remove software
utility before installing MathGraph 2.5. Also be sure to
reboot your system after installing.


 
This is the third version of MathGraph. I hope it doesn't have many
bugs in it. The interface will work fine, but there might be a 
few bugs in the equation parser.  Trying to cover all the possible
combinations of factors in any given equation is a hard thing to
figure. I sat down and wrote this parser from scratch with few if
any source code from other projects for reference. Getting the 
parentheses levels to sort out in the right place at the right 
time proved to be pretty hard. For example consider these partial
equations:
5 - x
-(5-x)
-(-5-x)
(cos(-x))
-(cos(-x))
-(cos(-x-5))
Getting the parentheses to work in the right pattern with the 
negative sign operator proved to be the hardest part of the 
design process for the software. I'm still not sure if I've 
covered all the bases on it. I hope that MathGraph doesn't cause
you to mess up on a math homework problem or a business 
calculation. If it does, I hope you know that you use this 
shareware at your own risk. I regret the mistake, but I accept
no responsibility for it. The Help menu will give you all the
instructions for using the software. This is MathGraph 2.5.
A few copies of MathGraph 2.0 may have gotten downloaded before
I offered this version. The version 2.0 did not have context
sensitive help and there was a small bug in accessing the help
file. I uploaded the version 2.0 thinking that I would have to
wait for the version 3.0 of MathGraph before I had this problem
fixed. But, I got this great idea of writing a ocx control to 
display html files as the help files. Well I got the control
worked out in a couple of days and the html help file written
also. The html files are a lot easier to work with when writing
and I didn't have to use the help compiler, which was giving me
all kinds of trouble when I tried to edit the stock afxcore.rtf
file that is usually used for Context Sensitive Help. There is
still not an index with this version of Mathgraph 2.5, but, I
think that I can work that out soon. I just wanted to offer
this upgrade from MathGraph 2.0 as quick as possible before
it got downloaded a lot with the rather disappointing help file
that it has. The software was written in Visual C++ vers. 4.00 
and 5.00.  I did find a few bugs in the MathGraph 1.0
equation parser, most notably an error by the fourth or fifth 
decimal place when using the solve function. This bug was covered in the
Help menu of Mathgraph 2.0 as is most of the other stuff. Read that
before using the program, it will make things easier.
This version of the shareware is not free. I request 
that you send me $5.00 for its use. If your in college, think 
about how much of your money goes for tuition. If you flub 
a few homework problems because you did it all with a hand 
calculator, think about the diference in your grades. Use 
MathGraph to study for tests. With MathGraph you can cover 10 
times as many example problems while studying than you could 
with a hand calculator. If you cover 10 times as many problems, 
then figure how much better you will do on those finals.
If MathGraph makes just ONE letter grade diference in a whole 
year, (which it probably will), isn't it worth the $5.00 fee?
Pretty cheap compared to going down to the bookstore and paying
over $100.00 for MathCad or something else. MathGraph doesn't 
have all the frills of MathCad but it has a whole bunch of 
calculating and graphing power. Please register and send $5.00
(five dollars, cash, check or money order) to:      

Tommy Pylant
454 Riverton Dr.
Rainbow City AL. 35906.
ph# 205-442-5323

If you have any comments, questions, gripes, or found a bug you,
can email me at the following address as of 05/31/97.

tpylant@peop.tdsnet.com

Thanks for trying MathGraph 2.5 and I hope you get a lot of good
use out of it.

