Equation Editor 2.8 breaks up

Morris,

I do actually agree with you.

However we're going to great pains here to step out of my world of engineering, mathematics and software and produce a system Jooe-Blogs can use and perhaps his dog. Despite popular belief very often you should design your program for the minority not the majority. For example, if I put large clear buttons on my calculator you and my grand-mother can use it. It I put smaller buttons on it, only you can use it. Functionally it does the same, and you can learn to live with large buttons; however by designing for my grandma rather than you, everyone is happy.

I appreciate you need to consider the market and the audience for any product; however in our current case, the sizable minority are not people not like you or me. I suspect they are users who infrequently type out mathematics (perhaps once a month or so), very possible don't even understand mathematics, and almost certainly don't program. They therefore want a system thats intuitive and requires little to no initial reading to master. They will experiment with this system for perhaps 1 minute before giving up.

For us, however, the benefits are clear, great looking equations, so we'll blunder through virtually any interface even if we had to learn braille.

Don't worry I won't dumb down this system, but I will try to understand everyones needs and where-ever possible implement small change that make it even easier to use. Otherwise I run the danger of being as arrogant as MS!

A must read for everyone in software dev: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-High-tech/dp/0672316498

Recent feedback from the dog include:

• Tab to move from set of curly brackets,{}, to the next.
• Button for
• Clear should remove the rendered image.
• Downloading a pdf should trigger a new window (as most companies have virus checkers that run and mess up the display).
• When moving the mouse over the rendered image a popup should display saying that they can drag this image to Word etc, but do little else
• The drop downs panels should only open when you click on them - not at all sure about this one personally!

I'll keep asking.

Will