Mimsy Were the Borogoves

Hacks: Articles about programming in Python, Perl, Swift, BASIC, and whatever else I happen to feel like hacking at.

MathPad is back!

Jerry Stratton, February 28, 2013

Just an FYI, MathPad is back! Version 3.0.4 supports Mac OS X 10.6 and up, and works on Intel Macs without Rosetta. You’ll want to read the What’s New file; for example, I’ve been using .mathpad as the extension to get Leopard/Snow Leopard to associate my MathPad files with MathPad. In 3.0.4, the extension is officially .mp.

Another major change is that the default file format is RTF instead of text. You can save as text but there is unfortunately no preferences setting to prefer text over RTF. MathPad continues to read text files fine.

Some neat changes (I think) include the ability to use π instead of ‘pi’ in calculations.

There are several other changes as well, likely related to the switch from Carbon to Cocoa.

Update: I have the older MathPad still at home, and it turns out you can use π instead of ‘pi’ in calculations in the old one as well.

Update 2: The preferences come set to look like they’re set to Fixed number format with 2 decimal places, but it acts as if it’s set to 0 decimal places. Close the window and then open it, and it will be fine—but you may need to go into preferences, set it to something other than two and then set it back to keep it working in subsequent launches. As it is it still seems to lose a place sometimes.

In response to A simple math pad in Perl: I finally upgraded to Lion at the office; that means no more Mark Widholm MathPad. I got a simple replacement working using SilverService and Perl.

  1. <- padmath functions