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Old April 21st 08, 07:09 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.homebrew
Joel Koltner[_2_] Joel Koltner[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Dec 2007
Posts: 133
Default Mathcad version differences, etc.

Michael,

"msg" wrote in message
news:er2dnY-QZL0urJHVnZ2dnUVZ_sKqnZ2d@cpinternet...
The recent thread discussing W0IYH's new book got me researching Mathcad
Has anyone seen such an analysis?


I haven't, but I can tell you that version 12 was still just an "enter the
product code and it works anywhere" whereas by version 2001 it required
Internet activation (presumably with a finite number of activations -- not
good if you upgrade computers regularly and and to keep it for awhile). (The
versions went 12, 2000, 2001, 2001i, 13, and now 14, AFAIK.)

The biggest improvement for me between version 12 and 2001 was that they let
you have scales on both the left- and right-hand sides of a graph. There were
of course other new features and what-not, that's just the only one I remember
caring that much about!

The change to an XML file structure (it's ASCII-readable) allows for easy
searching of MathCAD files and -- ostensibly -- being able to parse, convert,
and create your own MathCAD worksheets programmatically, at least if they
actually documented the structure ("schema") reasonably well. (Some companies
change to XML just to satisfy some big corporate "checklist" of features
required of software and don't publish -- or incompletely publish, as with
Microsoft Office -- their schemas.)

---Joel