This
first project is designed to introduce you to Mathwright32. We will explain
how to open, to read, and to close a Document. The Document is called explore.lva.
It is designed to explain some of the basic commands, and to give examples
of Display Objects and Gadgets that can appear on a Mathwright32 page.
We
will show two ways to open Mathwright Author and view this book. The simplest
way first, then a general way that opens a blank copy of Mathwright Author,
and reads the book you want into the program using the menu.
Starting Mathwright32 with a Document
If
you want to read this Document, opening Mathwright at the same time, you may
simply browse to the explore directory in Program Files/Bluejay
Lispware/Mathwright32 Author/microworlds/explore directory. (unless you
selected a different directory) using Windows Explorer, and double click the
icon: explore.lva.
Starting a blank copy of Mathwright
As
an alternative, you may first open a blank copy of Mathwright, and then either
begin building a new book, or open an existing one. For that, follow steps
1 and 2 below.
Step 1: You may click on the Mathwright Author 32 icon above in the MWAuthor32 group on the Start Menu, or you may go to Windows Explorer and click on mwauthor.exe in the Program Files/Bluejay Lispware/Mathwright32 Author, or you may select Run..., then enter the path to mwauthor.exe.
Any
of these will open a blank copy of the program.
Step 2: Opening the Microworld. Once the program opens, you will see a blank screen with a menu at the top. From the menu, select WorkBook, Open. A dialog box should appear. You must now type the name of the Microworld you want to open in the field labeled Filename.
The
Microworlds supplied with Mathwright32 Author are by default in subdirectories
of the Program Files/Bluejay Lispware/Mathwright32 Author/microworlds/
directory. Type the following path in that field (or select the file in the
box below as shown above and click on explore) Program Files/Bluejay
Lispware/Mathwright32 Author/microworlds/explore/explore.lva Then click
Open.
The Microworld should open.
The
Microworld opens in Reader Mode, just as you would see it in Mathwright32
Reader, and almost the same as you would see it on the web in MathwrightWeb.
As you work on a Microworld, you will toggle back and forth between Design
Mode and Reader Mode from the WorkBook Menu:
Design and Reader Modes
When
in Design Mode, you may create new objects on a page, may copy and paste objects
or whole pages from other pages or Microworlds, and may even paste the content
of pages from classic Mathwright 2000 WorkBooks into your Microworld. In Reader
mode, you may save these changes to disk. The distinction between Design and
Reader Modes is this. When in Reader Mode, Mathwright behaves the way that
Mathwright Player does. It shows how the book would look to readers. Nearly
all of the object menu items are still available to readers. They may change
the properties of existing objects, create scripts, pictures, reports, and
so on, but they may not actually save the changed Microworld to disk, so that
all of the exploratory changes they make to the Microworld are temporary.
In
this way, the integrity of the Microworld is preserved (it always opens with
the same appearance and behavior) but students are free to explore it and
make temporary changes.
Step 3: Closing a Microworld The instructions for the Microworld appear in Tutorial Project 4. When you have finished, you may close Mathwright32 Author. There are several ways to do this. The simplest is to close Mathwright by selecting the WorkBook menu, see the menu above, then either select Exit from the menu. This closes the entire program, and pops up the "Stopping Mathwright" Notice.
On
the other hand, if you would like to continue working in Mathwright32, you
may select either New Microworld, or Open Microworld... . This
will close the current Microworld (Be sure to save it first.) For
example, to paste a page or object from a different WorkBook into this one,
you would