Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!rpi!rpics!quinnt
From: quinnt@rpics (Tom Quinn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: drawing diagrams
Message-ID: <550@rpi.edu>
Date: 9 Feb 89 19:19:56 GMT
References: <427@s1.sys.uea.ac.uk>
Sender: usenet@rpi.edu
Reply-To: quinnt@turing.cs.rpi.edu (Tom Quinn)
Organization: RPI CS Dept.
Lines: 43

In article <427@s1.sys.uea.ac.uk> jrk@s1.UUCP (Richard Kennaway) writes:
>
>Are there any Macintosh programs which will draw mathematical diagrams?
>These are the sort of diagrams I mean (or as close as I can get with
>typewriter graphics):
>
>        A ---> B ---> C
>        |      |      |
>        |      |      |                   ------>
>        v      v      v                  A       B -----> C
>        D ---> E ---> F                   ------> \       |
>                                                   \      |
>                                                    \     v
>                                                     ---> D
>[more graphs and other stuff deleted]

I recently saw a demonstration of Wingz, the much-delayed
"presentation spreadsheet" package from Informix.  Besides having many
built-in graphing functions (some very powerful, but none seem to be
what you're asking for), Wingz has a programming language built in to
it that may be able to generate the type of diagrams you need.  The
language gives you complete programmability over (among other things)
the user interface (you can draw, add/remove/modify menus, and even
call external routines).

I realize that a spreadsheet may not be what comes to mind at first
for the functionality you're requesting, but about ten minutes into
the demo it was easy to forget you were watching a spreadsheet demo -
the capabilities in Wingz went way beyond my conception of what a
spreadsheet program would be expected to do.

Disclaimer: I have no connection with Informix other than as an
attendee at one of their demonstrations, and as a future owner of
Wingz (I won a copy at the demo :-).

>Richard Kennaway                SYS, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.
>uucp:	...mcvax!ukc!uea-sys!jrk	Janet:	kennaway@uk.ac.uea.sys


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas F. Quinn					quinnt@turing.cs.rpi.edu
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Computer Science Department