Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ncar!tank!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!urbsdc!jwilson From: jwilson@urbsdc.Urbana.Gould.COM Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Mathematica (long) Message-ID: <26700015@urbsdc> Date: 2 Sep 88 23:52:00 GMT Lines: 269 Nf-ID: #N:urbsdc:26700015:000:9356 Nf-From: urbsdc.Urbana.Gould.COM!jwilson Sep 2 18:52:00 1988 [line eater, eat your heart out ] Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathmatica, the amazing math program now available for the Macintosh ( oops, sorry if that shockes anyone) is interested in porting the program to other machines, including the Amiga. However, he is not sure if that would be a good thing to do. If you are interested in this program, you can express your interst by mailing math@wri.com on internet. Please, don't just mail him if you want to say "yea, we should have everything the mac has," but aren't seriously interested in purchasing the program. It is a serious program; according to Wolfram, the Mac version requires a minimum of 2 Meg, and to do anything really interesting, it can take 2.5 - 4 Meg The software also costs $500 ( regular version ) to $800 ( mac II version). If you are seriously interested, and have a machine capable of running the program, you might want to express your interest to Wolfram, and point out the advantages of porting the program to the Amiga ( the graphics interface, the knowlegeable user base, etc.) What followes is a general statment made by Wolfram on the University of Illinois net. My signature is at the bottom. If you have trouble mailing directly to the Mathmatica people, you can mail to me, and I will forward. /* Written 1:42 pm Sep 2, 1988 by liberte@m.cs.uiuc.edu in urbsdc:uiuc.mathematica */ /* ---------- "Mathematica information" ---------- */ The following is from Stephen Wolfram: ------------------------------------- I've seen quite a bit of talk on the net about Mathematica, and I wanted to set a few things straight. 1. Mathematica for the Macintosh 1.1 Availability Mathematica for the Macintosh has been shipping (in quite large quantities) since the day it was announced: June 23. We seemed to have confused some people by not following what seems to be the industry standard of pre-announcing one's product. You can get Mathematica either directly from us, or from various dealers (such as ComputerWare in Palo Alto). Our prices are: $495 for the standard Macintosh version $795 for the Mac II version. Our number is: 1-800-441-MATH (for orders); 217-398-0700 (otherwise). So far as we know, Mathematica is not available through any discount mail-order houses. We have various special deals for universities. One deal involves a huge discount for large universities that bundle Mathematica with all the Macs that they resell. 1.2 Memory Mathematica needs a lot of memory to run well. We had originally thought that many of users would do rather simple things with Mathematica, so that 2 MB would be enough. Our users seem to be doing MUCH more sophisticated (and interesting) things than we had expected, and 2 MB isn't usually enough. With 4 or 5 MB, Mathematica will run really well. With 2.5 MB you can do a lot more than with 2 MB. It would be a lot better for all of us if memory were cheaper, or the Mac had virtual memory. (I'm happy to say that it looks as if the price by weight of 1 megabit SIMMs has now gone below the current price of gold.) 1.3 Documentation The main documentation for the kernel of Mathematica (the part that actually does the computations) is the book that I wrote, which is published by Addison-Wesley. The title is: "Mathematica: A System for Doing Mathematics by Computer". There is both a paperback ($29.95) and a hardback ($44.25) version. If you can't find these books in your local bookstore, call Addison-Wesley. (The person in charge of the Mathematica project at Addison-Wesley is Allan Wylde: 415-594-4444.) We're now shipping the hardback version of the book with the Macintosh software. (This has depleted supplies of the hardback from the first printing of the book, so right now, you may only be able to get the paperback from bookstores.) 1.4 Versions The current version of Mathematica for the Macintosh is 1.03. This version includes animation, and various other features not in 1.0. Unless you specifically call to request it, the first upgrade we will send you is Version 1.1. Version 1.1 will be ready to ship within a few weeks (the software is being tested; manufacturing is underway). This version includes a number of small fixes, together with some new features. Most notable among these is the ability to digitize mouse input -- if you click on a graph, you can have the coordinates of where you click fed into Mathematica. So long as you send in your registration card, you will get a free upgrade to 1.1 when it is ready. 2. Mathematica for Other Machines 2.1 Sun Workstations Mathematica will be available for Sun-3, Sun-4 and Sun 386i from Sun Microsystems. They assure us that it will be shipping within a month or so. Contact your local Sun sales representative for more information. The product manager for Mathematica at Sun is Andy MacRae (415-336-1047; amacrae@sun.com). If you're interested in seeing Mathematica be available on Sun-2's, please tell Andy MacRae. 2.2 IBM PC RT Mathematica will be available from IBM on the RT under AIX. Contact your local IBM sales representative for more information. The list price for Mathematica on the RT is $2000. The person responsible for Mathematica in the RT division of IBM is Vicky Markstein (512-823-4072). 2.3 Silicon Graphics Mathematica will be available from Silicon Graphics on Iris 4D workstations. The list price is $8000 (commercial); $4000 (educational). The interim contact person at Silicon Graphics is Lisa Paul (415-962-3361). Mathematica does some neat stuff on the Iris, using the Iris 3D graphics hardware. You can take 3D objects generated by Mathematica, and manipulate them in real time using external programs that come with Mathematica for the Iris. If you're interested in Mathematica for Iris Series 3000 machines, let Lisa Paul know. 2.4 Ardent and Stellar Versions of Mathematica are available from Ardent and Stellar for their machines. The list price is $8000 (commercial); $4000 (educational). The contact people are: Jim Newcombe at Ardent (408-732-0400) and Ian Reid at Stellar (617-964-1000). 2.5 NeXT Mathematica will be bundled on NeXT's machine, which we all hope will be out very soon. 2.6 Other Platforms We are actively working on ports of Mathematica to a number of other machines -- watch for an announcement around November. We'd be very interested feedback that anyone can give us on the desirability of having Mathematica on particular systems, e.g. Alliant Apple Mac A/UX Apollo Atari Mega AT&T UNIX PC (3B1) Commodore Amiga Convex Cray UNICOS DEC VAX: VMS or UNIX ETA Hewlett-Packard IBM mainframes (3090 etc.) IBM PC's: 386-based under MS-DOS; 286-based under MS-DOS; Under OS/2; Under Xenix; etc. Meiko Sony Tektronix. We are considering making a version of Mathematica for the AT&T UNIX PC available (probable price: $400). We will do this if there is enough interest. Please let us know if you're interested (end users, dealers, distributors, etc.) There is talk of setting up a consumer-oriented time sharing service that would let people use Mathematica on a supercomputer with over a gigabyte of memory. The idea is that you would set up a calculation on something like a Macintosh, but then, if you ran out of time or space, you could dial up the supercomputer and run the kernel remotely on that. Every version of Mathematica has the communication mechanisms necessary to do this built in. We're trying to gauge the level of interest in this service. Please let us have your comments. 3. Mathematica User Group etc. There are moves afoot to start a Mathematica User Group, which will maintain a library of Mathematica packages and notebooks, produce a newsletter, and run conferences. It will also coordinate with local user groups. The first president of the Mathematica User Group will be Steve Christensen of NCSA (217-244-0544; steve@ncsa.uiuc.edu). 4. Mathematica Developers I'm very happy to say that many people have contacted us about doing third-party development associated with Mathematica. We are now in the process of preparing an information kit for potential developers, that should be ready to send in 1-2 weeks. Please contact us if you would like one. 5. Mathematica Objects 5.1 T-Shirts We made some Mathematica T-shirts, which seem to have been selling even faster than the program. They cost $8 each; write or call us if you want one. 5.2 1989 Calendar We are intending to produce a 1989 Mathematica calender, with large color pictures generated by Mathematica. If you've produced some particularly nice-looking graphics with Mathematica, we'd very much like to consider it for the calendar. 6. Feedback, Please We'd really like to know what people are doing with Mathematica. One of the most satisfying things about writing programs is seeing people do imaginative and interesting things with them. If you are doing something exciting with Mathematica, do post a notice about it to a newsgroup, or send us mail about it. -- Stephen Wolfram. P.S. You can send mail to math@wri.com. EOF /* End of text from urbsdc:uiuc.mathematica */ Jeff Wilson jwilson@xenurus.gould.com uiucuxc!urbsdc!jwilson sometimes of the University of Illinois, sometimes of Gould CSD-Urbana Software Development Center ( a subsidiary of Nippon Mining Corp), always of the Amiga community.