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Welcome to the VisMa wiki! This wiki will be divided in 2 section, and will act as both the user guide and the development manual.
VisMa mainly runs on Python 2.7 and a few supporting libraries like PyQt 4. Unfortunately, VisMa is still taking its baby steps hence a pre-compiled package isn't available yet. It has some dependencies other than Python 2.7 and PyQt 4, like:
Freeglut 3 (for OpenGL)
PyFTGL (python wrapper for FTGL, it can be built using instructions on the PyFTGL GitHub repo )
simplejson
If you are an Ubuntu user, fret not, run.sh script is available for you guys, to setup the environment and run the program for the first time. You simply need to go to the root folder of VisMa and run
./run.sh
in your terminal.
Note: Installation scripts for other Operating systems is on its way. If you have already installed all the dependencies for your system, you can go into the root directory of VisMa and run the program by running
python main.py
in your terminal.
When you will open VisMa for the first time, you will see a window with an editable textbox in the top center, this will be the area where you will be writing your input equation. You will also encounter a list on the left side, the list will save a list of equations you have solved using VisMa, on the right side you will see a grid of buttons, these buttons are to assist you in typing an input, they only support LaTeX style and normal greek style input with very limited buttons, but will updated as VisMa develops.
You can type in your input equation/expression in the input field (VisMa has support for only constant powers for now),
e.g 2x^2/x + 5x^2 - 5 + x = 2 - x
and press the button Interaction mode, this will populate several buttons, like in this case, simplify, division, addition, subtraction and find roots. If you press simplify, VisMa will simplify the equation to the simplest form, and show you the step by step animation with comments as to how that stage was achieved. The input area will also be replaced by the final stage i.e. the most simplified stage of the equation.
You can choose to press any of the other buttons like addition, subtraction, division, multiplication. This will only perform all addition or subtraction or division or multiplication operations respectively, at that stage, and show appropriate animation.
Finding roots only support, quadratic roots for now, and it will help you find the quadratic roots of the equation.
You can choose to solve only a part of the input equation/expression. To do this, select only the part of the equation/expression you want simplified, using your mouse cursor, and press interaction mode, and then use one of the available buttons. The buttons will perform the same task as specified above, but only for the selected part of the equation/expression.
There are comments at the start of each module which explains the utility of the module, comments are being added for each function as well. These comments will include, relevance, how it works, future vision.
Please use tabs and not 4/8 spaces. Since Python is a language in which indentation is part of the syntax. We would want it to be consistent among all the developers. If you prefer using spaces, please use 8 spaces, as it will make it usable on terminal text editors like vim and nano.
