ISETLW ISETL for Windows ISETLW 3.0 Beta Status

ISETLW was written in 1995 and revised in 1996 as a 16-bit, Windows 3.1 program. In June, 1996, I was asked by our president to become Director of Computer Information Services to lead us through many large computing challenges that were imminent (replacing all major administrative computing systems, Y2K, etc.). Overseeing all computing, telephone, and television services has left little time for teaching and research. Until now! Spring Semester, 2001, I am on a Sabbatical Leave working on the next version of ISETLW.

Changes and improvements in ISETLW 3.0

• Converted to a 32-bit program, designed for Windows 95/98/Me/NT4/2000/XP.
  
  
  • Replaced obsolete code and structures with newer, 32-bit stuff.
    
    
  • Long file and folder names are now fully supported (ISETLW 2 used only 8.3 file/folder names).
    
    
  • File open/close and Print dialog boxes are newer style.
    
    
• The home-made button bar has been replaced with a toolbar that looks and feels like the standard toolbar in Word, etc.
  
  
• Multiple Document Interface
  
  
  • ISETLW 2 has only one execution window and one graphics window, and they act like two separate program windows.
    
    
  • ISETLW 3 has an MDI interface. You start up with one execution window and one graphics window, but can use File | New or File | Open to create/open additional Text windows. You can highlight code in a text window and click the run button or File | Run to execute that code in the execution window.
    
    
  • The Window menu allows you to horizontally or vertically tile the screen with multiple text/execution windows (if you minimize the graphics window). Or you can simply tile the graphics and execution window for easier simultaneous viewing of both.
    
    
• Display Speed
  
  
  • ISETLW 2 displays long output very, very slowly on screen.
    
    
  • ISETLW 3 displays long output very, very quickly on screen.
    
    
  • Example: On my 550Mhz Pentium III computer running Windows 98 displaying pow({1..8}) takes more than 1 minute and 20 seconds with ISETLW 2.0, but less than 1 second with ISETLW 3.0.
    
    
• Window and File Size Limits
  
  
  • We have broken the size limit barriers that existed in version 2. Version 2 couldn't handle more than 10K of text in the execution window without saving partial results in the middle of a long display. Version 3 will handle up to 1GB in a text window or the execution window and will read/save files up to 1GB each.

Status of ISETLW 3.0

• The 32-bit conversion, the toolbar, the MDI-interface, and the speed improvements are essentially done. There are still a lot of minor details and much testing to be done.
  
  
• The help system is fairly extensive, but incomplete. For the Beta release it is only available as web help. In a later release it will be compiled into an htmlhelp file called isetlw.chm.
  
  
• We have broken the size limit barriers that existed in version 2. Version 2 couldn't handle more than 10K of text in the execution window without saving partial results in the middle of a long display. Version 3 will handle up to 1GB in a text window or the execution window and will read/save files up to 1GB each.
  
  
• Visit here to see the look and feel of isetlw version 3. (version 2 vs version 3)
  
  
• Visit here to see the an example of having one or more text windows along with the execution and graphics window.
  
  
• ISETLW 3.0 Beta released June 6, 2001.