Mavscript 0.1.8 released

[A. Vontobel]

Mavscript improves support for OpenDocumentText files (.odt) created by recent versions of OpenOffice/LibreOffice. The math backend Yacas now draws simple plots.

This release of Mavscript can process MS-Word files (.docx). The docx support must be considered experimental.

Changes:
- remove xml-tags in OpenDocumentText files
- remove xml-Tags in docx files (experimental)
- Yacas 1.3.5 (pre-release) --> Plot2D works
requirement: gnuplot in the path.
- bsh-2.1.8 (beanshell2, fork of BeanShell, compatible with java 1.5 syntax)
- jmathplot lib added for mavscript --beanshell
- Examples and information added about plots

[A. Vontobel]

Announcement on the yacas (http://yacas.sf.net) mailing list
Mavscript 0.1.8 shipping Yacas 1.3.5 (pre-release)

Dear Yacas users

Mavscript (http://mavscript.sf.net) allows the user to do calculations in a
text document. Plain text, html, LaTeX, OpenOffice Writer odt and
(experimentally) MS-Word docx files are supported.
The calculation is done by the algebra system Yacas.

The Mavscript 0.1.8 release includes a pre-release of Yacas 1.3.5 (java
version). In Yacas 1.3.5 the function Plot2D has been enhanced; it can write
png files.

Plot2D(f(x), 0:3, output = png, filename = "plot.png");

This feature is useful in mavscript. In template.html a result plot of f(x)
can be included as follows:

<P><IMG SRC="$m Plot2D(f(x), 0:3, output = png, filename = &quot;plot.png&quot;) $o"></P>

The function makes use of Gnuplot. Thus gnuplot must be in the path. The
solution has been tested on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. If your environment
does not allow to install gnuplot, have a look at Drawj2d
(http://drawj2d.sf.net).

Drawj2d is a java console program for technical line drawings, that also
supports Yacas Plot2D data. It actually just reuses the plotting function from
the yacas applet and writes pdf/eps/svg/emf/png. See the drawj2d program
reference (last page) for a complete example.
Function to plot

f(x) := x^2-x-2

Write a yacas plot data (ypd) file.

ToFile("plot-f.ypd") Plot2D(f(x),x=-5:5,output=java)

Call Drawj2d directly out of Yacas to produce a plot:

SystemCall("drawj2d -F ypd -W150 -H100 plot-f.ypd")

In a similar way mavscript-yacas and drawj2d allow to combine calculations and
(result dependent) line drawings in a text document (html or odt).

Thanks to the yacas developers for the versatile algebra system!

Adrian