Hello.
I'm new user of SMath and I have some questions, mostly about its user experience.

I would be appreciated if you can help me in at least anything .

And I'm sorry for such many words, but I couldn't write shorter .


I started to use MathCAD about 10-15 years ago when I was studied in institute.
Since that time I still use it for calculations (not often).
I use 2001i version from that time - it works fine without installation.
Recently I wanted to look at a newer version but found comments in internet that new MathCAD Prime is sucks, and only v15 is okay, but it's not good too because of OS compatibility (I wonder because even 2001i works ok in Win10) and bugs (ex. M035 has bug with matrix calculations). So, I concluded that v15 version has bad codebase, and anyway it will stay not actual in some next years.

I have read many comments (mostly on this forum : ) that SMath is very good, and it's free.
It's not open source, so author can abandon it and I will stay in the same situation like with MathCAD, but I decided to try it.

I have read in comments that SMath is not absolutely the same as MathCAD, and some things are being made in different ways.
It's not a problem to remember different hotkeys and methods to do old things, BUT I just can't use SMath efficiently (below I will show my problems).
I tried to search the answer for my problems in internet but couldn't find it.
Also, there was nothing helpful in "Help\Reference book", "Examples", "Handbooks".

May be it exists in SMath and I just couldn't find it and you will answer some questions.



1) Trouble 1 - lack of hotkeys.

How to insert range - what is the hotkey?
In MathCAD I simply type "i", ":", "1", ";", "10" and get this:



In SMath there's no hotkey. I have to take my hand away from keyboard and use mouse to click on toolbar.
I'm not a fan of vim with it's keyboard-only UX, but I noticed that SMath has a big problem of using mouse on almost every action.
There're no hotkeys (or at least no in tooltip) for such often used functions as for example "Vectorize function", "Range", "Range with second value", "Boolean not", "Summation", "System of values", "if", "for", "while".
In contrast in MathCAD I used mouse much more rare, and only because I didn't remember all hotkeys.

Then. If I open "Introduction to SMath Studio" from handbooks I will see this visualization of range - the same as in MathCAD (page 28):



But in reality it looks different:





2) Trouble 2 - unable to edit/reuse typed expressions.

There are many situations where I can't edit expression. I have to DELETE ALL expression and type it AGAIN.
Here are some examples.

2.1) I can't delete 2nd index.

In MathCAD:



In SMath:



How can I delete unneeded 2nd dimension? I tried Backspace and Del keys - nothing helps.
I can only delete ALL expression.

There are TONS of such situations in SMath. And I use it only 1 day.

I could found nothing helpful in google or in docs provided with SMath.

2.2) Can't edit back converted for-loop.



Might be this is not good example of bad UX because I can press Ctrl-Z.
But in real situation I didn't press it - I typed several expressions before I noticed that for-loop is broken.
I couldn't find better way than delete all and type it again.



3) Trouble 3 - unexpected result for the action you used earlier.

The same behavior must work always the same way, but it doesn't.
Let's see how "Add line(])" works in MathCAD (this is how it should work):



Now let's see how it works in SMath.



Why God why I press the same command ("Add line(])" and it works at 1st time and doesn't work in 2nd time? Why I should press "," in second and after times?



4) Trouble 4 - move cursor inside expression and typing.

4.1) Example 1 - Move cursor.

Imagine you typed the following expression and want to change "c" to "d" and "+" to "-" in 2nd line (red markered).
In MathCAD:



{Space x 5 times}{Ins}{Right x 2 times}{Del}d{Up}{Right x 5 times}{Del}-

In SMath I can't use Up/Down arrows to move quickly. I found only one way to move - arrows Left and Right. And it's super slow if you have not such a simple expression with only 3 lines.

{Left x 34 times}{Backspace}d{Left x 37 times}{Backspace}-

In MathCAD you need 18 keypresses.
In SMath you need 75 keypresses.
In 4.2 times more!

4.2) Example 2 - Typing an expression.

In MathCAD I can select a part of expression, and can divide it (or copy, or delete):



In SMath I can't. I only can select the whole expression.
So what?
So I have to DELETE all this, press "/" and then type it again! I even can't copy/paste what I already typed because I can't select it.
This is very simple expression - when you have much more complex one it won't be so easy to type it again like in this example.

4.3) Example 3 - Typing an expression.

In MathCAD when I typed this:



I can press Tab to move cursor to the next empty cell. Or, in this example, when I will press Right arrow I will have cursor in empty cell.

What in SMath?
Tab move cursor across all page expressions. May be this is even better that in MathCAD (I don't know how to do this in MathCAD).
But you have to press Right arrow 5 times! And wait while it will select "5", then "i+5" and so on until be able to continue to type your expression.

In MathCAD you can press Tab from any place and cursor immediately will be positioned in next empty cell. This is super fast.

Another thing is to move cursor on the page.
In MathCAD you can use arrows to move to any direction.
In SMath you stuck in expression.
MathCAD has WYSIWYG control - you pressed Up and cursor went up inside or from current expression, you pressed Right and cursor went right inside or from current expression.
While SMath has not.
This is a (might be one of) problem of SMath - it's not intuitive - you must think before you do any thing (not just only think how to move cursor, but also how to type expression too).
And if you mistyped you can't just fix it like in MathCAD - often the only way to fix is to delete all and type it again in the proper place.



5) Trouble 5 - 2D plot autoscale.

It is 21th century now. MathCAD could autoscale its plot 20 years ago!
SMath can't even now.
This is very very sad.

When you do some researches, you can get very different result. One result can be in range [0;10], another in [0;10000000].
You need to change some expressions, press F9 (or automatically) and look at the graph.
You can do it in 20 years old MathCAD, in Mathematica, and I guess in many other CADs.
But not in SMath.

It takes very much time to set plot range manually after each amendment of expression.

---

All this troubles I got after only one day of using.
I'm not sure whether it is all difficulties I will meet, or there're plenty of others.
Having only these I already spend much more time for the same things than in MathCAD.

This is so basic UX things, and they should be done in the very first order.

Imagine you are writing text and you can't move cursor by words (Ctrl-Arrows), or some other basic thing. It's horrible - you have to move your hand to the mouse for a 1-second action and then move hand back, or press arrow many many times.

I think SMath can be a real alternative to MathCAD, but it should improve its UX first.

But now, imho, SMath is usable only if you want free tool that you use several times/year, or may be /month.
Otherwise (even for home usage, and especially for professional) it will be just waste of time for managing of such basic things.

Edited by user 15 April 2018 18:05:33(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

hello woki ,

very long post, I'll try to answer...


Correct, actually there aren't hotkeys for range (maybe CTRL+R would be an appropriate shortcut).
You don't need the mouse however, type rang+TAB... not fast as CTRL+something but no mouse required; also there is the dynamic assistant and dialogs for functions (CTRL+E) and units (CTRL+W); none of them requires the mouse.



Yes, this is because recently the rendering was changed to make more clear that the output is a matrix and better see what is part of the range bounds in complex cases.
Screenshots even from few months ago are without square brackets (BTW even matrices were rendered with parenthesis instead of square brackets).



These are the same; it happens where the function is rendered with a customized glyph; it was initially introduced to avoid an annoying alternation glyph/text in cases like mat(),sys(),line(),for(),sum(),... where there are different overloads of the same function but not for every number of arguments, and the textual form might become very long to display...
You can still see it f.e. in cases() function form CustomFunctions plugin; another negative side-effect of the approach used in cases() is SS-2423.



This is the intended behavior; a line() is a "line object", the vertical bold line with his arguments, not a line intended as an horizontal space in the block; "," is your argument separator, and it is intended to add arguments in functions almost everywhere (line is indeed a function; exception is in non-vector matrices). You can use a nested line to group things and make the function/procedure easily editable.



True, things to improve; space navigates in less moves than arrows, BTW.



This was recently highlighted here.


Overall, good hints
Is not accidental that version is not yet 1.0, though

Edited by user 15 April 2018 20:58:57(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified