Once you have successfully entered an equation, Graphmatica will proceed to draw it. If warning messages are on, any non-fatal errors that are encountered will be displayed in the status bar. If you want to pause the graph at any time, just click the Pause button, or press ESC or enter on the keyboard. Graphmatica will display the message
Pause at var1=value1, var2=value2. Press ESC to abort or enter to restart...which displays the current values of the variables in the equation. Since Graphmatica cannot start a new task while it is in the middle of drawing a graph, while you are pausing you have only two options: turn off Pause and continue graphing by Clicking the Pause button again or pressing enter, or abort the graph by clicking the ABORT button or pressing ESC. You may find that you prefer using the keyboard to clicking the pause button with the mouse, because the response time is somewhat better (i.e. graphing will actually stop sooner).
You may work on other applications while drawing or pausing a graph, but Graphmatica will not respond to anything but pause, restart, and abort requests. (It may look like you can select menu items, but they will not be executed. In fact, drawing will stop while you are in the menu, so don't waste your time trying make Graphmatica do anything else while it is graphing.) You may also move or minimize and restore the Graphmatica window. Do NOT, however, attempt to resize the window while you are graphing. Although Windows will not try to stop you, Graphmatica will ignore any attempts to resize the window as this would likely change the size or shape of the grid and render any points already plotted invalid. This will result in a grid which does not fit the size of the window (if this happens, just minimize and restore the window once graphing is completed and Graphmatica will recalculate the screen size properly).
When the graph for your equation is complete, the status bar will change from "Graphing: xxx" to "ON SCREEN: xxx" to indicate drawing is done. Also, the pause button will be dimmed and the other buttons in the button bar re-enabled. If you'd like to start all over with a completely different equation, just start typing (the last equation is automatically selected in the edit field so the text is automatically cleared once you start typing). If you'd rather modify the last equation, click the mouse or press a direction key to turn off the selection and then go right ahead; it's already stored safe and sound in the redraw queue (for more information see The Redraw Queue). Or you can modify any previously entered equation by using the drop-down listbox. (Clicking the mouse on the down arrow icon to the right of the graph prompt drops down a scrolling listbox from which you can view and select equations with the mouse.) You can also use this capability to redraw a graph that is in the queue but not presently on the screen: just select the equation you want and press enter or click the Graph button.
Since you can draw as many graphs on the same grid as you want, Graphmatica does not provide for having multiple grids on screen at the same time. However, if you would prefer to look at two graphs side-by-side instead of superimposed, just run two copies of Graphmatica next to each other. (You can share data between them using the clipboard or by saving and opening graph documents.)