Mathematica, Maple and MathView™'s Web-Based Capabilities

SPIMSOW Home || Dept. of Maths. & Stats. || Swarthmore College

Web-based Manipulations

• Maple is not interactive on the World Wide Web. You can view Maple V notebooks and tutorials on the web without any special software, but you cannot change anything in the web notebooks. In order to change anything, you need to buy your own copy of Maple V. For more information on Maple V and other Maple products go to the Waterloo Maple Inc. Web-Site. If you want to view any of the Maple notebooks that we created, please click here.



• Mathematica Notebooks can be interactive on the web, but only if you have your own copy of Mathematica 3.0 and are using it with your web browser to view these notebooks. For more information on Mathematica 3.0 and related computer packages, please go to the Wolfram Research Inc. Web-Site. In order to view Mathematica Notebooks on the web, you will need a helper application known as MathReader. MathReader 3.0 allows you to play with animated Mathematica graphics only. To get a free copy of MathReader 3.0 please go to our Mathematica Set-Up page. To see some of the Mathematica notebooks that we created, please click here.



• MathView™ is the most interactive of these three programs. However, we found MathView™ to be unstable on some platforms. To view and interact with MathView™ notebooks, you need the free MathView™ Internet plug-in, which can be downloaded from the LiveMath Web-Site. The MathView™ Internet plug-in allows you to manipulate MathView™ documents on the web. To get more information on how to get this plug-in, please go to our MathView™ set_up page. To see some of our MathView™ notebooks, please click here.

Download capabilities:

• Mathematica 3.0 notebooks are automatically saved on your hard drive when you click on the links to them. The saved notebook can be opened up with Mathematica 3.0 or MathReader. When using Mathematica 3.0 to view a notebook, the viewer can manipulate the notebook as much as they wish. Remember, though, that MathReader will not allow you to change anything in the notebook. It only allows you to view the notebook.



• Maple V notebooks have to be saved as text on your hard drive. To open a Maple notebook and manipulate the mathematics, you must have a copy of Maple V on your computer. When you open the notebook you saved, Maple will give you two options. You can open the document as "text" or "Maple text." If you open the document as "Maple text," Maple only writes the part of the notebook that was originally Maple input so you get the Maple input of the notebook, but no actual text. If you open the document as "text," Maple writes everything you saw on the web. However, it is all in plain black text, including the Maple input and output. So although there is a way for the user to save, open, and manipulate a Maple Notebook, it is quite complicated. SPIMSOW found that if a copy of the notebook was saved in "bin hex" format and put on a web site, the notebook could easily be downloaded onto your computer and opened using Maple. The notebook then appears in Maple just as it did on the web. Both of these options require you to have Maple V on your computer. Remember that you can view a Maple Notebook on the web without any type of helper applications or plug-ins. Just click on the notebook and it will appear in front of you.



• MathView™ notebooks can be saved quite easily. However, once they are on your hard drive, you can only OPEN them up if you have the MathView™ application on your computer. To save MathView™ notebooks, click down on them with your mouse in your web browser window and then click save on the contextual menu that pops up.