PocketCAS version 1.1.0 Performance Edition released!

[MrMage]

Hi guys,

I have just released PocketCAS 1.1.0 "Performance Edition". It features a new command history where you can edit old commands and has extremely increased performance.
Version 1.1.0 Performace Edition - 11.9.2008

    * PocketCAS now is distributed via four different CAB files, depending on your device, see Download page for more details
    * Lines prefixed with an @ letter will be hidden in TeX output mode. This prefix has no effect in non-TeX mode.
    * Lines prefixed with a // will not be processed by xcas at all. This way you can easily add comments to your scripts.
    * Bug fixed: 3*4 will now be shown as 3*4 rather than 34 if using TeX mode
    * Bug fixed: ifactor(15) will return 15 rather than 3*5 if not using TeX mode
    * Menu redesign (more sub-menus to increase clarity)
    * Added a feature to save an image of the last result (File->Save as image)
    * Links on the about page are working now
    * Replaced the UPX'ed MimeTeX executables by non-UPX'ed ones for an additional performance boost
    * Several other performance improvements
    * History function (you get a list of the last commands you entered and you can select which one to execute and edit)
    * A server executable which will be started upon loading PocketCAS and will stay loaded so that single calculations can be performed much faster
          o Some results are generated (and TeXed!) in less than a second!
          o The effect of commands entered before will not be discarded. Therefore previous declarations of variables will work in  commands entered later, too

Cheers

MrMage

[quocsan]

Hi, Mr Mage!

Thank you very much for improvements in your PocketCAS.
Wishing you good health and full of new ideas
so that PocketCAS is upgraded constantly.

San.

/edit by MrMage: to edit a message, press modify on the top right bar on your post.

[quocsan]

Dear Mr Mage,

Please check this:
I have downloaded and installed Large QVGA version.
The program refused to calculate until I moved mimetex_gif.exe to Executables folder.
Please check whether some setting was wrong in your cab file.

Regards,
San.

[MrMage]

Please download again. It should have been fixed the day before yesterday already. If not, I will have to look over the CABs again.

[ton.biegstraaten]

Hi,
Via the XCAS page I found your program and it looks very good. It's wonderful to see maple things on my phone. I read about plotting. I have a rather old version of anaother CAS (YACAS) on my phone that is able to produce files for gnuplot 4.2 that is also available for WM6, with standard names and location. With a script you can easily show them. Not as nice as directly showing them, but far better than nothing. You wrote that is not too difficult to produce gnuplot files, well ... time is expensive, but if you have it :-) I would be pleased with such an extra.
For the TeX stuff, I think that when I have something nice for putting it on paper, I port the code to the PC and use Xcas. The phone is more for expirimenting on places without a laptop, quick things while walking outside if my dog allows it.

Great work,
Ton

[MrMage]

Hi,
Via the XCAS page I found your program and it looks very good. It's wonderful to see maple things on my phone. I read about plotting. I have a rather old version of anaother CAS (YACAS) on my phone that is able to produce files for gnuplot 4.2 that is also available for WM6, with standard names and location. With a script you can easily show them. Not as nice as directly showing them, but far better than nothing. You wrote that is not too difficult to produce gnuplot files, well ... time is expensive, but if you have it :-) I would be pleased with such an extra.

Where to get gnuplot 4.2 for Windows Mobile? Where??? (/edit: OK, i found it - nice to have been told about that) I only found a really old port of gnuplot 3.7 on the internet :-( I would really love to have gnuplot 4.2!
I know YacasCE and its plotting features already, and I might create such an interface some time, but let me figure some other things out fiirst (like creating tutorials, a reference for the XML files, and a reader for the aide_cas file).

For the TeX stuff, I think that when I have something nice for putting it on paper, I port the code to the PC and use Xcas. The phone is more for expirimenting on places without a laptop, quick things while walking outside if my dog allows it.

Sorry, but I don't understand what you mean with this.

Thank you for the feedback by the way!

[ton.biegstraaten]

Here I found it.
http://cid-bdafbf10fbe8f872.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Y%C3%BCklemeler?view=details
Indeed, not where you would expect it :-)
What i meant is: If I need TeX files, I can go to my laptop and do the same as on my phone with your program. I use my phone mostly to play with, check some ideas when I don't have a pc nearby.
At: http://statsnow.net/Symbolic/ I downloaded the xcascorefiles, it contains a reader for aide_cas. The one with this program is outdated, so you have to replace it with a recent one.
And for the plotting: of course do what you like, it's no job and I'm already glad with what you did.
Ton

[MrMage]

> What i meant is: If I need TeX files, I can go to my laptop and do the same as on my phone with your program. I use my phone mostly to play with, check some ideas when I don't have a pc nearby.
Of course, but those images look a lot nicer than mere text, don't they?

> At: http://statsnow.net/Symbolic/ I downloaded the xcascorefiles, it contains a reader for aide_cas. The one with this program is outdated, so you have to replace it with a recent one.
I know, but I want a reader integrated into PocketCAS. I am already providing new versions of aide_cas with every PocketCAS release. By the way, the xcas core found at statsnow won't work with PocketCAS.

[ton.biegstraaten]

Yes, you won't expect it on a phone, I didn't know there was a TeX for WinCE.

Did you ever try ifactor( <a number > 2^31-1) ? I can't. You can specify products of large numbers 2147483647^2, but change the last 7 to 8 and you still use the previous number, so it's the input proces to Xcas, not Xcas itself
Also once in a while the TeX output disappears behind the input screen, that happens when the output becomes too small. Then you can't tap on it to get the full size. (99^99) gives that problem. Sometime with a lot of trying you get the full size text.

Ton

[MrMage]

Yes, you won't expect it on a phone, I didn't know there was a TeX for WinCE.

It's only pseudo-TeX, and compilation was fairly easy. See John Forkosh's Website for details (http://forkosh.com/mimetex.html)

Did you ever try ifactor( <a number > 2^31-1) ? I can't. You can specify products of large numbers 2147483647^2, but change the last 7 to 8 and you still use the previous number, so it's the input proces to Xcas, not Xcas itself

I know. I also have told Bernard Parisse about this issue. He says that it is because the numbers won't get converted to GMP numbers (which can be bigger than 2^31-1) properly. I will investigate this issue later.

Also once in a while the TeX output disappears behind the input screen, that happens when the output becomes too small. Then you can't tap on it to get the full size. (99^99) gives that problem. Sometime with a lot of trying you get the full size text.

I have experienced this bug earlier, but was too lazy to create a workaround (I thought no one would ever use terms that long). The same happens with taylor(exp(x),x,15,x=0), for example. As a fix, I will add another menu entry to enable/disable scrollbars for the selected element in the next version.

[ton.biegstraaten]

O, I like to see large numbers. Being used to 16 or 32 bit numbers, to see a screen full of digits and know they are correct has something.
I looked further and there some other things.
I wrote a couple of small functions, but they should be on one line, shift return as in XCas or Maple doesn't work. Is there another key combination that does the trick?
Is there a way to import code that works in XCas? Because of the previous point I cannot do this now. Also print (and pause) do not work.
I think you did not (yet?) incorporate programming. Are there plans (after docs, XML etc)?
I wrote a recusive function (factorial, what else?) 51! works, but 52! gives an error and after that I have to stop the program and restart before I can do something else.  I assume there is a recursion depth limit?

For the rest It did very well, I tried a lot of functions from the ref manual of Xcas without problems, wonderfull tool, with a good performance. I also tried Yacas, a peculiar program language, but very very slow. A more or less equal program in Python was about a 100 x faster.

[ton.biegstraaten]

Well, xcas on linux also has the 51 limit, so it will be a general limitation, probably settable. Also read command in pocketcas loads a program. It's a little bit inconvenient, I should prefer(if time allows it) a load menu entry in the file menu, but I can do now what I want with the program. An editorscreen within the program is handy but a lot of work I think and not very usefull, developing can better be done on Linux or whatever.

Ton

[MrMage]

I wrote a couple of small functions, but they should be on one line, shift return as in XCas or Maple doesn't work.
Is there another key combination that does the trick?

Multiple commands on one line do not work (I am aware of that) and probably never will, as they would break the TeX output. If you want to hide a line in TeX output, add an @ in front of the corresponding line.

Is there a way to import code that works in XCas? Because of the previous point I cannot do this now.

Not yet, just the "load file" option.

Also print (and pause) do not work.

Please explain. I am not used to xcas scripting yet.

I think you did not (yet?) incorporate programming. Are there plans (after docs, XML etc)?

Yes, but no concrete plans yet. This issue has very low priority at the moment, especially as scripting on Windows Mobile devices is not very comfortable.

For the rest It did very well, I tried a lot of functions from the ref manual of Xcas without problems, wonderfull tool, with a good performance. I also tried Yacas, a peculiar program language, but very very slow. A more or less equal program in Python was about a 100 x faster.

You mean YacasCE? I know that xcas scripting under Windows Mobile is very slow at the moment.

Also read command in pocketcas loads a program. It's a little bit inconvenient, I should prefer(if time allows it) a load menu entry in the file menu, but I can do now what I want with the program. An editorscreen within the program is handy but a lot of work I think and not very usefull, developing can better be done on Linux or whatever.

What do you mean? File->Load is the command to open a file. What do you mean with an editorscreen?

[ton.biegstraaten]

I'll try to be more precise.
I'm a programmer and I like the combination between math en programming, so scripting is important for me. The advantage of a CAS is that it combines unlimited accuracy, all kinds of math functions and scripting. Usually the ways to handle sequences and lists are very extensive and that makes programming easy. I've some Maple experience, used Python ( e.g. Sage if you know the system, or NZMath) and recently Yacas, both the Linux and CE versions. Yacas had a peculiar intriguing scripting language, but it was very slow, about a 100x as slow as python.
I knew Xcas, but not very usable on the phone, until your program. Xcas has a nice (maple like) programming environment and I like to develop scripts under Linux on XCas and use them on my phone. I think scripts are essential, so I looked for ways to use them.
The read command imports a script, compiles it, so it can be used. I suggested a load command, next to the currently available open command. The load imports the script and compiles it, (i.e. using the read command of xcas).
The print command (forget the pause, cause xcas doesn't support it) makes it possible to show intermediate output from a script, also with text, e.g. print("this is output", result);

I know making scripts is `uncomfortable' in WM devices, but using them isn't, you can't expect a cas developer makes all the tools you need, so you have to develop your own. Preferably under xcas on linux, so you don't need an editorscreen on the WM device to develop scripts, but you must be able to use them.

As it is now I can develop scripts under Xcas on Linux and use them on my phone (with read), but without intermediate results, that's a drawback, but not a fatal one. Also I have to specify the full pathname of the script, and I prefer a fileselectionbox to look for it.

Don't see this as criticism, I realize this program is a lot of work, in your spare time I presume. I' m just expressing ideas about doing the things I like to do, (also in my spare time) and looking for tools that help me. I stopped from using Yacas because it's slow, not under development (on WM) and also because the new version (1.2) is worse (in my opinion) than the old one (1.1). Xcas is C++ internally and that's fast. I like Python, but Xcas is more specialized, so I want to give it a try.
Well, a long answer, I hope I am more clear now.

Ton

[MrMage]

Okay, I have understood what the read command is for. You want to import code in the native xcas syntax, right? And the read(FILENAME) command does just that. What do you mean with compilation? Just evaluating the code in the file (because xcas doesn't compile commands internally AFAIK).

But what about the print command? At the moment, each line of code in PocketCAS gives you one line of result. In which way do you want that changed? Do you want intermediate results outputted from the scripts loaded by the read() command?