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MathStudio main features

Why choose MathStudio ? Here you are some good reasons:

• Open Source - MathStudio is free and it comes with sources. This means that if you want to know how MathStudio works, if you want to modify it or you just want to compile it with non-default settings, you just have to download its sources here.

  The GPL license ensures that the program and its updates are completely free: no 30-days trial or limited features. Open source is something more than a program like MathStudio: it's an alternative to the big software corporations. Open source programs are developed by volunteers in their free-time; this does not mean that open source programs are insecure or buggy; on the contrary, this means that open-source programs are always improved and extended. To know more about the open source community (millions of people; Sourceforge.net has more than 9 millions of unique visitors per month), you can explore the GNU site or the Sourceforge site (which hosts MathStudio project); if you want to know more about Open Source licenses, click on the image on the right.

• Cross-platform - MathStudio actually runs without problems both on Linux/Unix and on Win32 systems. In fact, the wxWidgets library used by MathStudio implements the same features on a lot of different operating systems: Mac OS, Linux (with GTK+, Motif or just X11), Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2K/XP. MathStudio has been tested on Windows XP, Windows 98, Linux with GTK+ & X11, but probably it runs with few modifications also on other systems.

• Compiler support - MathStudio can be compiled with a lot of different compilers: GCC, MSVC++ 6.0, MSVC++ .NET, BorlandC++, MinGW and CygWin; for more info about compilation, please refer to the "Install.html" file which is part of Sources downloads.

• Easy to use - One of MathStudio's main objective is to be as easy to use as possible; with MathStudio you will be able to write & solve math systems of equations or inequalities as you can do on a piece of paper, just much faster using MathStudio math engine.

• Simple, extensible - MathStudio is an open-source program and thus the developers working on the program are volunteers; this involves that new developers join the project and some others must leave it for various reasons... this approach requires a program structured homogeneously and an extensive and handy documentation on each technical detail. If you want, you can have a look at the Developer's guide...

• Intermediate steps - MathStudio math engine (built using our MathCore library) has an often underestimated feature: it can guide the user toward the solution of the problem showing him, step-by-step, all the operations performed by its internal algorithms. Usually in a CAS like Mathematica or Matlab, you type in the equation and with a command, you immediately get the solutions: this is a black-box approach to the problem. You just do not know how the program solved the equation (in fact, CAS often use very complex algorithms also on very simple inputs). MathStudio instead, shows the user all the operations done step-by-step: the user has the maximum control on data and he can even learn from the program !
  This means that the program also has a great educational potential (unfortunately, this aspect has not been explored enough yet).