Computers since their inception have been used to solve engineering problems. Toward support of next-generation, customizable, generalized software, a mathematical equation editor has been designed, developed, and tested using object oriented (OO) programming techniques. The motivating purpose of this equation editor is to allow a user to graphically define mathematical equations to be solved in a computational partial differential equation-based problem solving environment. The OO scripting language Python was used in conjunction with the OO GUI toolkit Qt to create the editor. Analysis of the underlying abstraction of a general equation yielded the key concept of an information-holding bounding box. Such boxes hierarchically contain every character and symbol in an equation. Specific rules were formulated to spatially arrange a set of boxes into a properly formatted equation. Robust insertion logic of alphanumeric characters, mathematical symbols, and common function names was implemented for intuitive point-and-click equation building.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MSSTATE/oai:scholarsjunction.msstate.edu:td-4341 |
| Date | 06 August 2005 |
| Creators | Stahl, Levi Russell |
| Publisher | Scholars Junction |
| Source Sets | Mississippi State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
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