Thanks to all those who are getting this MaplePrimes ball rolling. Please note that we have a long weekend in Ontario (home of Maplesoft) so some of the responses to your comments from our team may be a bit delayed. Happy "Civic Holiday"! (that's what we poetic Ontarians call this day :-) )

just noticed that the default width for the text box when composing a message is too wide by 3-4 characters for a 1024x768 resolution. T4.

The standard Maple worksheet uses color to distinguish elements. This is convenient when viewed on the screen, however, when printing to a monochromatic printer, colored text frequently is too light. I prefer to have it printed as dark black. This tip describes one way to do that. The technique is to apply a previously created style file that specifies all the fonts as being black. The easiest way to do this is to first create a user style file that has has your default settings, then manually edit this file to change the foreground color of all fonts to black. You could manually change the colors using the Maple Format -> Styles submenu; however, doing so is more work than editing the file in an external editor.

Previously I described how to change the default zoom setting for the Maple gui by modifying the appropriate initialization file. Another useful setting to change is the default background color of the help browser. This is done by modifying, in the initialization file, the line HelpBGColor=. I set it to HelpBGColor=240 240 240, that gives a light gray background that is less harsh on my eyes. The three fields should be integers from 0 to 255; they correspond to the red, green, and blue components of the color.

A poster on comp.soft-sys.math.maple recently asked how to set the default zoom for worksheets to a non-standard value; the jump from 100% to 150% being rather large. Standard GUI This can be readily accomplished by modifying the proper Maple initialization file.

Linux

the file is ~/.maple10rc

Mac OS X

the file is Maple 10 Preferences in Library/Preferences under your user directory (thanks to Tim Lahey).

Windows

the file is Maple10.ini (not maple.ini). The maple help pages do not mention this file and I do not have Windows, so cannot check. I have received reports that it is located in the users subdirectory under the Maple installation directory, but also reports that it is in c:\Documents and Settings\JoeUser, where JoeUser is your user name. My advice, until this is cleared up, is to search for all instances of this file and use the newest one. Maple writes to this file whenever the gui exits, so the newest one should be the right one. You might send me a note on what you've found (along with which version of Maple you are using); I'll update this accordingly.

Is there an option to mark all posts read? Either for individual forums or for the whole board?

My signature isn't showing up.

When I upgraded my Mac G5 from OS 10.3 to OS 10.4, the OS X versions of Maple (Maple 9.5 and Maple 10) continued to work. But the classic versions of Maple (Maple 7 and Maple Vr5) quit working. It turns out that the classic versions will run in OS 10.4 if the following files (perhaps from an old "System Folder") are moved into the "Extensions" folder of the active classic OS 9 "System Folder":

We've already had a couple of very good tips and techniques posted by users. It would be nice to somehow pool these together and make it easy for users to "browse" ... at the beginning the moderators could make the call on what is a "great tip" but over time, there may be a more democratic mechanism ... any thoughts? T4.

The new beta.mapleprimes.com has a brand new membership system. If you have an existing MaplePrimes EMP account or a Maplesoft.com account, you will need to sign up again. Registration is easy, you only have to pick a username and tell the site your e-mail address. Everything else is optional. So please sign up.

I just posted a small maple module assignment. I used the code tag to typeset the module, however, the result, at least as previewed, strips off the indentation, which is not convenient. Here's an example: someproc := proc() description "this does nothing useful"; "this line should be indented"; NULL end proc;

Can you movie the "Preview" and "Submit" buttons? Maybe just below the "Body" box, above all the others (Input Format, Creative Commons, Attachments).

How about the choices I make in "Creative Commons" remembered for the future, so I don't have to re-do them every time?

Just yesterday this came up in a newsgroup. For me the default size 100% seems too small, but the 150% is overkill. Having a 120% as a standard choice would be useful.

This forum is where you can suggest improvements for Maplesoft products. It will be monitored by Maplesoft staff who will record your input and in many cases, post appropriate responses. Please keep in mind that Maple is used be a wide variety of users with different needs. All comments will be read, taken seriously, and considered when making product decisions. This forum is moderated by Tom 4.