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Tips

Welcome to Euler!

You are reading this page, because you started Euler for the first time. Take your time to go through the sections below. If you want to start with Euler interactively, load the notebook "A First Welcome" with "Help - Open Introduction or Example Notebook".

Have fun and keep interested in mathematics. In case of problems, feel free to contact the author.

Configure Euler

Configure External Programs. To use the external programs Latex and Povray, have a look at the pages on the Installation of Euler. Note that Maxima, an external editor and the Tiny C compiler are installed with the program. Maxima and the external editor can be configured in the Options menu.

Browser. If you want to use another browser, or your standard browser does not work with Euler, see the section in the pages dealing with the user interface. You can configure any browser for Euler.

Graphics Window. By default Euler uses only one Window for text and graphics. The graphics will get visible with the tabulator key, or when they are embedded into the text. You can use two windows if you disable "Extras - Graphics in Text Window". See the pages about the user interface for more details.

More than one Instance of Euler. In Windows 7, you can attach Euler to the task bar like any other program. To start a second copy of Euler, shift-click on the icon.

Fonts. Another good tip is to use the Source Code Pro fonts. These fonts are installed with Euler. They are designed for programmers by Adobe. The fonts help to distinguish the problematic letters 0 and O, 1 and l, and are more easy to read for text containing code. The fonts are the default fonts for Euler. Disable "Options - Program Settings - Use Source Code Pro" if you like.

Learn Euler

Start. The introduction notebooks now are the main road to learn the features of Euler, especially the First Welcome. You can load these notebooks into the Euler program and try the commands, or look at the HTML pages exported from these notebooks and type or copy the commands into Euler. The one window interface helps to see the browser and Euler at the same time, or to switch easily between both. Of course, the examples are a good way to study Euler for real life problems.

German Documentation. For German speakers, there is a PDF file on numerical math based on a class I held for Bachelor students in Germany. It contains an introduction to Euler and many numerical examples. On my homepage, you can also find a script about optimization using Euler as the main tool. Both scripts are for math students.

Overview

Three is a page with an overview of the features of Euler. In general Euler has been designed to provide the following

Command Line

Cut and Paste. The command line follows general standards for graphical user interfaces. It is possible to cut and paste with the shift key or with the mouse. In contrast to other programs of the same genre, you can go up and down and fix commands at any time.

Order of Execution. Note, however, that commands are executed only, if you press return in the command line, and only this command executes or the group of multi-line commands that this command belongs to. (To join a line with the next one for multi-line command, end the line with with three dots "...".) To execute more than one command, do either of the following.

Undo. You can restore the previous command line with ctrl+z, but Euler has only one backup for each line. If you delete lines with Ctrl-Backspace, you can restore all deleted lines at the current position with Ctrl-U.

Notebooks

Besides commands and their output, notebooks can contain sections of comments and images.

Comments. To insert a section of comments, press F5 in a command line. An editor will open. You can enter paragraphs of comments. Do not break the lines of a paragraph with return. This is done automatically, when the comment is inserted into the notebook. Leave empty lines between paragraphs.

Images. To insert the result of a plot command into the notebook, end the line with a colon as in ">plot2d("x^2"):", or use the insimg command. Images can also be loaded inside comments. See the GUI reference or the introduction notebooks for more information.

Formulas. Sections of comments and the output of commands can contain formulas formatted by Latex. For this, you need to install and configure Latex as described in the GUI documentation.

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