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Radovan, as always I'm very glad to see familier faces here Hope you're doing well! Yes, I found some time to release new SMath Studio version... there are plenty improvements done in code. Not sure I will be able to do updates every week, but while I have some free hours I must keep project running!

As always, I wish you as much time as you can to devote to SMath . But, to be honest, I almost stopped using the official versions. The most comfortable is to use the Martin's unofficial one. There we have the recent Handbook maintained by Martin (still do not like CTRL+click there), all the plugins etc. Now there is a gap between the official nightly build and the previous version. I just hope that the things will be synchronized ASAP.

Regards,
Radovan

Wrote

The most comfortable is to use the Martin's unofficial one. There we have the recent Handbook maintained by Martin (still do not like CTRL+click there), all the plugins etc. Now there is a gap between the official nightly build and the previous version. I just hope that the things will be synchronized ASAP.

I know, this is off topic here, but let me still comment on the unofficial version.

- Portable versions are essential for testing, as you can cleanly separate installations, settings and extension directories.
- For 4909, the maintenance of pre-installed plugins was important due to the instability of the online gallery access. This seems to be resolved now, at least up to now I did not encounter a single problem - Andrey, great work!
- for build 5151, a portable version can be generated. Still I did not test things like Mathcad EFI features, which required a special executable, provided by uni.
- Currently, we are focussing on a new release of the Maxima plugin (including the announced comfort functions for graphics). You can find the plugin in the SVN repository, it is not yet released to the gallery
- The active book help system is not accepted by ordinary users like my students, major problem is lack of search feature. There is coverage of many features now, but you need to browse the book a lot in order to get an idea where the required information could be. Also, I have no signals from Andrey, that any type of integration is going to happen soon (like the mentioned search, hot key for function's help pages, automatic interlinking to table of contents and browse history, up/down etc., not to mention link target editing support)
- Ctrl click can be avoided by making the pages read only, there were attempts to do that, but the pages are not correctly updated then (empty image regions)
- Initially, I had hoped for pages from other users, that is why the book is in SVN. In fact, there is not a single one.
- I had several feedbacks to the pdf manual from outside world, but none to the active book.
- Given these facts, I currently focus on updating the pdf manual. In principle it is possible to maintain a bilingual source in LaTeX as well but I did not test that.
- The pdf manual shall assume that you have Maxima installed. Thus, wherever there is a clean Maxima solution, I shall drop extensive discussion of internal workarounds. This mainly affects the CAS features and graphics.
- I might resume maintenance of the activebook later, because I still like the idea of an integrated help system.

Hello Martin, I Moved your comments here. Hope you would not mind.

I agree with everything you said. I also have no particular idea how to make, an Integrated Help system for instance. Hope that Andrey will put some comments about it. I just think that your efforts regarding the Handbook is much better than nothing, and I hopped that it would be a seed to an official one. How to make a an official Integrated Help system? Just do not know. This question is here and there for a long, long time here on the Forum.

Regards,
Radovan

Radovan, thanks for moving the post.

There is an old thread, discussing the active book issues, just for reference.

Thank you!

To show my vision of how workbooks such as ActiveBook should be supported by SMath Studio, I've included implementation of Interactive Book extension type into todays stable release of SMath Studio.

Please, check it out:


I realize there are plenty of additional work required, but now this process is started.

mkraska, I had to update your ActiveBook a bit. All changes available in SVN. I've zipped the whole ActiveBook and uploaded it into Extensions Registration web-page (yeah, there is a new type of extension available there: Book). I did it from your account, so now you can do updates by yourself. Please contact me directly in case of any questions.

Best regards, Andrey Ivashov.

Andrey, thanks for your activities towards an integrated help system. I shall inspect the SVN changes and try the upload functions later today (no SVN access via tortoise SVN in our school network).

This is what I understand can be done in the current version:

Installation of the interactive handbook
- Open the extensions manager (Tools> Plugins or Help> Examples ...)
- Select the "Interactive books" entry in the list of items to manage.
- Switch to "Online Gallery"
- Download "SMath Studio Handbook"
- Select "Use by default" switch.

Access to the interactive handbook
- Press the ?-button in the tool bar or use Help> Reference book, then a new window pops up, showing the title page.
- Enlarge the window (the book is formatted for standard SMath window)
- Use Ctrl-click to navigate, you can edit but not save.
- Special buttons [Home] [Back]do not work, [Copy] works.

The attached screenshot is done with the Maxima plugin from SVN installed. This shall be released to the gallery tonight.

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There is a formatting issue in the interactive book.

Andrey, something happened to the line termination characters. This seems to irritate the text region. Also, some math regions changed size, but that does not seem to be problematic.

See the text formatting in the attachment. The original version has a german SVN time stamp, your version has a russian one.

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I should have reported that before, but I take the chance now to confirm Martin's observation about disturbing text regions.

See this video please.

This one is with the recent nightly build and the Active Notebook from Gallery.

Regards,
Radovan

This happens when the text region contains line feeds. Because the files produced by Andrey contains both carriage returns and line feeds, I suppose is a problem related with the text editor that has used. (A file generated in UNIX systems looks like the first shown here)

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Problem resolved. I reproduced the changes made by Andrey using FAR. Both PDF and interactive handbooks are now up to date in the online gallery.

Thank you!

I just found that Wish List link don't work anymore on contents.sm (it worked with previous version).

Regards.

Interactive Book updated.

There were problems with strange special characters, possibly FAR messed up some of the unicode characters. They might appear in other pages as well, feel free to report problems.

The interactive handbook has been updated.

You can install it via Tools> Plugins (extension manager) from the online gallery.
Select "Use by default".
Open it by pressing the [?] button in the toolbar.

Martin,

I would like to express to you and your collaborators an huge thanks for your work in the direction of documenting the smath features ( and of the many add-ins linked to its usage ) ,it is really a wonderfull job that requires a big dedication and care to details .
It is really hard try to keep updated ( as much as possible ) this whole set of documents, keep up the good work!!

Thanks again and best regards

Franco

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The interactive handbook has been updated.

You can install it via Tools> Plugins (extension manager) from the online gallery.
Select "Use by default".
Open it by pressing the [?] button in the toolbar.

Thank you Martin. Can you put a date? Other plugins do this and helps understand when it was last updated

Wrote

Can you put a date? Other plugins do this and helps understand when it was last updated

In fact, none of the extensions except for the pdf manuals is time-stamped. The plugins have a version number, the examples, snippets and interactive books use the xml-file-version of the .sm file (which is incremented upon each save operation).

If you use an svn-browser like TortoiseSVN, you can see the full history of the handbook files.

SVN repository