This is a wish list for the version of Maple after whatever immediate next version is being developed.

It's about three-quarters of a year since Maple 16 came out, and if Maple follows its recent history of annual releases then development of new features of the very next release after 16 would be quite well along, and possibly even nearing completion. But that could mean that this is a good time to discuss wish lists for the version after that -- the version two releases after 16.

I'll start off with some items relating to Embedded Components:

1. Sliders should be resizable (stretchable), and their width should be assignable programatically using the SetProperty command. My reason for wanting this is not just so that I can see tickmark values more clearly (and I really do want tickmark values shown) but also so that I can get a finer grained variation in the values attained by the Slider.
    
2. In Maple 16 the TextArea Component got new special handling for the case of its having just a single line. The new behaviour was that newlines would be ignored, for 1 line TextArea Components. That was a minor improvement. But what is also needed is behaviour where hitting the Enter/Return key executes that Component's "Action When Contents Change" code.
   
   I think that it would be superior if such a mode were a programatically editable property of the TextArea Component, and that it would be quite distinct from that earlier single-line newline-ignored quality. (When Enter->execute were toggled on, Ctrl-Enter might still add new lines.) But I understand if that's too hard. It would be much better than nothing just to get some mode in which Enter->execute occurred.
   
   Without Enter->execute mode there is no Embedded Component that can properly serve as an Entry Box.
    
3. 3D plots' orientation quantities (theta, phi, psi) should be programatically editable properties of a Plot Component, which could be accessed by the SetProperty and GetProperty commands. I mean the values shown in the upper plot menubar, not any values stored in a PLOT3D data structure.
   
   
4. An XML Schema (which could be used for worksheet validation) that is up-to-date with respect to Embedded Components.
   
   
5.  Correct 2D typesetting of Matrices, Vectors, and piecewise constructs within a Math Component.
   
   
6. Text and units inside dials and gauges. (Inside means within the image, and not as a title or exterior caption.) 
   
   
7. Character (ie. nonnumeric, typeset) tickmark values on Sliders.
    
8. GUI Tables reimplemented as a new kind of Embedded Component. This is not so that one could add paragraphs/blocks/groups/etc to Table cells, but rather so that a few simple properties such a caption, input supression, and interior/exterior border toggling could be editable via the SetProperty command.

If you would like to add concrete and particular detailed suggestions in Comments here, for functionality of the Maple product,  then please do so. But please put general comments in some other thread.

acer