ELEMENTS OF THE DISPLAY

The toolbar at the top of the window contains buttons that allow you to perform the most common commands with one click of the mouse.

The Redraw Queue combobox serves two functions: first to accept input of new equations (you can type in a new equation at any time as long as you aren't currently graphing one) and second to retrieve old equations from the queue. If you want to enter a new equation, just type it in and press enter or click Graph to graph it. If a previous equation is highlighted on the input line, just start typing to start from scratch or press a direction key to clear the selection and edit it. To retrieve an old equation, use the up and down arrow keys to scroll through the list one equation at a time or click on the icon to the right of the edit field to drop down the list box for mouse selection (if there are more equations in the queue than fit in the box, it will have a scrollbar so you can see them all). You can also select equations just by clicking on their graphs!

The bottom of the main window holds the status bar, which displays help messages from the menus, the result of the latest action completed, the status of a selected equation, and during graphing, the equation being graphed, any warning error messages (if desired), and the pause message. So as not to obstruct the graphs, any message that does not require immediate attention or input will be posted in the status bar.

The Point Tables window (toggled on or off by the Point Tables item in the View menu or the toolbar) shows the coordinates of selected points from the last graph(s) drawn with the option on. You may scroll through this list at will. Select Copy Tables from the Edit menu to copy the text of the tables to the Clipboard, so you can insert them into a document, print them, etc. You can make this window wider or narrower by clicking and dragging its left-most edge with the mouse to until it is the desired width.

The Data Plot Editor occupies the same space as the Point Tables window; you cannot show both at the same time. However, you can toggle back and forth between the two easily using their toolbar buttonsthe tabs at the top of this pane.

Finally, there are also several floating dialog boxes which you can display or dismiss as desired:

• The Variables Panel, which can be displayed from the View menu and allows you to modify the values of parameters without editing the equation(s) manually.
• The Draw Tangent Line dialog box, accessible from the Calculus menu, allows you to enter or modify the coordinates of the tangent line manually instead of clicking on a point with the mouse.
• The Integrate Curve dialog box, also accessible from the Calculus menu, allows you to enter the curve(s) and region to integrate over without using the mouse.

You can switch the keyboard focus among the windows (equation editor, Point tables/Data Plot editor, and the various floating dialog boxes) using the standard Windows shortcut Ctrl+Tabshortcut key Tab. Each press of this key combination will move to the next window in sequence until you cycle back to the starting point.