Xref: utzoo comp.sys.amiga:70967 comp.sys.amiga.tech:15787 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!bloom-beacon!daemon From: rlcarr@athena.mit.edu (Richard L. Carreiro) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Maple V news for Amiga Message-ID: <1990Nov6.191819.13114@athena.mit.edu> Date: 6 Nov 90 19:18:19 GMT Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background) Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.tech Organization: the mind of Mike Jittlov Lines: 70 I sent mail to the Maple people asking them what's up, and here's the reply: Date: Tue, 6 Nov 90 12:47:01 GMT From: Joyce Brennan To: rlcarr@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: Maple for Amiga Cc: jbrennan@daisy.waterloo.edu > From rlcarr@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Mon Nov 5 18:39 EST 1990 > From: rlcarr@ATHENA.MIT.EDU > To: wmsi@daisy > Subject: Maple for Amiga > > Hello, > > I would like to know what the status of Maple for the Amiga is. > Specifically, > a) is 4.4 being ported to the Amiga? > b) if so, any estimated time of completion? We have a programmer who is currently working on porting Maple V, our newest software release, to the Amiga. This version of Maple features 3-D graphics and several other user interface enhancements. Maple V is expected to be released on the Amiga platform in the first quarter of 1991. Here is the latest report from our technical department: The kernel of Maple is finished. The projected user interface would be very similar to the X Maple. In fact, our idea is to copy the X Maple features into the Amiga machine. This will be finalized once I receive and read through all the manuals. For the graphics part, we will have both POSTSCRIPT and the IFF format. > c) if so, will 4.4 have any support for the 68881/2 math coprocessor? In an effort to accommodate the needs of all Amiga users, this new version will probably not support the math coprocessor (since many Amiga machines are not equipped with this coprocessor). -----end of reply---- This last bit I really disagree with. Considering the purpose of Maple, and its price relative to Amiga software in general, I really, really doubt people with non-accelerated machines are going to be the people who would be that interested Maple. I'd be willing to bet that of the people who would be interested in buying Maple V, that most would have 68881 or 68882 coprocessors. Casually throwing away a factor of 10 speedup annoys me. Heck, I assume they're doing double precision math in their code, so why not use the CBM math libraries - then those with the chips get the advantage, and it'll still work on those without the chips. And on Amigas without accelerator cards, things'll be slow enough that the overhead of mathieeedoub*.library probably won't matter. It's too bad - I've seen Maple 4.4 on Suns, and it's REALLY nice. I'm willing to spend the $400+ for Maple V on the Amiga, but I can't justify it if the program will not take advantage of a major part of my machine - a part which is designed to do high-precision math quickly. Am I outta line feeling this way? Comments folks? -- Rich Carreiro The "War on Drugs" ARPA: rlcarr@athena.mit.edu is merely a smokescreen for UUCP: ...!mit-eddie!mit-athena!rlcarr The War on the Constitution BITNET: rlcarr@athena.mit.edu JITTLOV FOREVER!