Regular readers of this blog will know that I am into mathematical software in a big way and that I have got access to pretty much all of the big commercial names – Mathematica, MATLAB, Mathcad, the NAG library and Origin to name just a few.<\/p>\n
One conspicuous omission from this list is Maple since my University doesn’t have a site license for it and I can’t afford my own copy right now.\u00a0 Thanks to the kind people of Maplesoft, however, I have been sent a review copy and so will be able to play with it, discuss it and hopefully be of some use to the Maple community.<\/p>\n
I’m going to start slowly and just talk about installation today but Maple seems to be a great program so there will be a lot more to come.<\/p>\n
Unboxing<\/strong><\/p>\n I was sent a copy of Maple 12.01 and, like many software applications these days, it came in what appears to be a seriously oversized box!\u00a0 Unlike many other applications though – the box for Maple is oversized for a very good reason.\u00a0 It contains manuals! <\/strong>For the benefit of younger members of the audience – manuals are books that used to come with computer software but over the years they have been dropped in favour of on-line help systems.<\/p>\n Maybe I am showing my age but I have always lamented the passing of good quality paper-based manuals and so I was overjoyed to find that not only does Maple come with a nice little ‘Getting Started’<\/em> pamphlet but it also comes with a 400 page ‘user-manual’<\/em>, a 388 page ‘Introductory Programming Guide<\/em>‘ and a 442 page ‘Advanced Programming Guide.’ <\/em>Truly, this must be documentation Nirvana.\u00a0 Other software vendors should take note!<\/p>\n I have never really used Maple before and simply flicking through these books gave me a flavour for what was coming and before long I was itching to get started.<\/p>\n Installation<\/strong><\/p>\n I installed my copy of Maple onto Ubuntu Linux version 8.10 and, like many new users, I didn’t even glance at the installation documentation.\u00a0 I spend some of my professional life writing<\/strong> installation documentation and I find that bashing my way through an install without first consulting the docs allows me to pre-empt most of the problems that new users face.<\/p>\n Once the CD had auto mounted at \/media\/cdrom1\/,\u00a0 I installed Maple by typing the following at a bash prompt<\/p>\n sudo \/media\/cdrom1\/installMapleLinux<\/strong><\/p>\n and a nice Graphical User Interface started up which lead me through the process.\u00a0 All very nice until it asked where I wanted to install Maple 12.\u00a0 The suggested directory was<\/p>\n \/root\/maple12<\/strong><\/p>\n Now opinions on this may vary but personally I don’t want to see anything get installed in the \/root<\/strong> directory – ever.\u00a0 I assume that the installer was picking up on the username I was using and, since I had used sudo, that username was root.\u00a0 Still, I would much rather see the default directory be \/opt\/<\/strong> which is used by many other commercial packages.\u00a0 I am being picky here though..it is only the default directory after all.<\/p>\n The rest of the install was very straightforward and went without incident.\u00a0 There comes a point where you have to be connected to the internet in order to activate the product but this is in line with many other packages of this type these days.<\/p>\n For those of you in user support – the problem will come when your Linux newbie user finishes the install and tries to actually run the thing.\u00a0 It hasn’t been integrated with the GNOME or KDE menus in any way and typing<\/p>\n maple<\/strong><\/p>\n at the command prompt rewards you with<\/p>\n bash: maple: command not found<\/strong><\/p>\n Of course if you have had a bit of experience with Linux then you will know that the fix to this is quite trivial but if you don’t know Linux at all then this will lead to a support call to your IT department or at least a bit of goggling.\u00a0 Even once this issue has been fixed, a new user may be surprised to find that the maple<\/strong> command rewards them with nothing more than a command line.\u00a0 The actual command you need to use is xmaple.<\/strong><\/p>\n Experienced users of Maple may be rolling their eyes at this point as they think something along the lines of ‘Why is Mike worrying about this stuff – it’s all so trivial.’ but I support applications like MATLAB and Mathematica at a large UK university and I find that experienced users rarely have the need to contact me.\u00a0 Beginners, on the other hand, contact me all the time and this is the sort of stuff that bogs them down in the early stages.<\/p>\n Despite these minor issues, the install went fine and Maple is working just fine.\u00a0 It is a very nice package and has many great features that set it apart from its competitors – expect to hear more from me about all of this soon.<\/p>\n update – how to fix the error message<\/strong><\/p>\n Someone recently pointed out to me that if you google the error message<\/p>\n then you get this page and yet I didn’t give details on how to fix it. The reason for this error message is that the maple command has not been added to your system’s PATH which prevents your system from finding and executing it.<\/p>\n To fix this, edit your .bashrc<\/strong> file\u00a0(which should be in your home directory) and add the following two lines to the end of the file<\/p>\n You’ll need to change \/opt\/maple12\/bin<\/strong> to wherever you actually installed maple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Regular readers of this blog will know that I am into mathematical software in a big way and that I have got access to pretty much all of the big commercial names – Mathematica, MATLAB, Mathcad, the NAG library and Origin to name just a few. One conspicuous omission from this list is Maple since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maple","category-math-software"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3swhs-au","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}bash: maple: command not found<\/pre>\n
\r\nPATH=$PATH:\/opt\/maple12\/bin\r\nexport PATH\r\n<\/pre>\n