Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.An excellent tool for those with a mathematical bent,
Jamie Shotton's Grapher was
downloaded from his web site. Although
you could try to set something similar up in the built-in Sheet, it would be
very tedious. Grapher aims to provide comprehensive graph drawing functions,
with up to 8 overlaid cartesian, polar or parametric graphs allowed on-screen
at the same time. It's also document-based, allowing you to store separate sets
of graphs in separate files. I've been looking at v1.20.
![[Screen Shot]](/reviews/3lib/Grapher/grapher.gif)
Like most Series 5 applications, Grapher is a doddle to install and comes
with 27kb of welcome on-line documentation, with well-laid out menus and
toolbars. In the process of the review, Grapher answered every one of my 'I
wonder if it does this?' questions and proved very easy to use.
In essence, you tell the program which graphs you'd like drawn and how. For
example y=sin(x)/x, as shown in the screen shot. There's a considerable degree
of flexibility in how the functions you enter are 'parsed', even to the extent
of allowing y>fn(x), which shades the appropriate area in addition to
plotting the line. Number formats can be changed, handy constants defined and
existing graphs easily modified with a dialog-based editor.
Extra functions such as Tracing and Integration, combined with multiple
zooming and fairly strict adherence to the Psion 'look and feel' just add to my
impression that this is a very mature program indeed. I really couldn't fault
it in any way. And, as I always encourage authors to do, Jamie's made it fully
working shareware, relying on people's honesty to bring in registrations rather
than strong-arm crippling tactics. Well done!
If you have any use whatsoever for a graphing program, this is the
one to download first.
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