When You Start Genius

When you start the GNOME edition of Genius Mathematics Tool, the window pictured in Figure 2.1, “Genius Mathematics Tool Window” is displayed.

Figure 2.1. Genius Mathematics Tool Window

Shows Genius Mathematics Tool main window. Contains titlebar, menubar, toolbar and working area. Menubar contains File, Edit, Calculator, Examples, Programs, Settings, and Help menus.

The Genius Mathematics Tool window contains the following elements:

Menubar.

The menus on the menubar contain all of the commands that you need to work with files in Genius Mathematics Tool. The File menu contains items for loading and saving items and creating new programs. The Load and Run... command does not open a new window for the program, but just executes the program directly. It is equivalent to the load command.

The Calculator menu controls the calculator engine. It allows you to run the currently selected program or to interrupt the current calculation. You can also look at the full expression of the last answer (useful if the last answer was too large to fit onto the console), or you can view a listing of the values of all user defined variables. You can also monitor user variables, which is especially useful while a long calculation is running, or to debug a certain program. Finally the Calculator allows plotting functions using a user friendly dialog box.

The Examples menu is a list of example programs or demos. If you open the menu, it will load the example into a new program, which you can run, edit, modify, and save. These programs should be well documented and generally demonstrate either some feature of Genius Mathematics Tool or some mathematical concept.

The Programs menu lists the currently open programs and allows you to switch between them.

The other menus have same familiar functions as in other applications.

Toolbar.

The toolbar contains a subset of the commands that you can access from the menubar.

Working area

The working area is the primary method of interacting with the application.

The working area initially has just the Console tab, which is the main way of interacting with the calculator. Here you type expressions and the results are immediately returned after you hit the Enter key.

Alternatively you can write longer programs and those can appear in separate tabs. The programs are a set of commands or functions that can be run all at once rather than entering them at the command line. The programs can be saved in files for later retrieval.