In Maple 8, there are many new capabilities and improvements to existing facilities. Key enhancements include Maplets, Student[Calculus1], ScientificConstants, and Differential Equations.

Maplets - By using the Maplets package, you can create windows, dialogs, and other visual interfaces that interact with a user to provide the power of Maple.  Users can perform calculations, or plot functions without using the worksheet interface. For more information, see Maplets.

Student[Calculus1] - The Calculus1 subpackage of the Student package is designed to help teach and learn the basic material of a standard first course in single-variable calculus. For more information, see Student[Calculus1].

ScientificConstants - The ScientificConstants package provides access to the values of various constant physical quantities that occur in fields such as chemistry and physics, for example, the velocity of light and the melting point of sodium. For more information, see ScientificConstants.

Differential Equations - In Maple 8, the pdsolve command computes numerical solutions for PDEs subject to boundary conditions. The dsolve command computes exact solutions to nonlinear ODEs of order two and higher using symmetries and also an integrating factor approach.

The important changes in Maple 8 are summarized under the following topics.

Changes to the Maple language and system facilities. For more information, see updates/Maple8/language.

Changes to the Maple programming facilities. For more information, see updates/Maple8/programming.

Expanded visualization and graphing capabilities. For more information, see updates/Maple8/graphics.

Improvements and additions to the fundamental model and specific applications of the Maple numeric computation environment. For more information, see updates/Maple8/numerics.

Improved efficiency through increased speed and reduced memory use. For more information, see updates/Maple8/efficiency.

New packages and modifications to pre-existing packages. For more information, see updates/Maple8/packages.

Significant improvements to the suite of differential equation solvers have been implemented in Maple 8. For more information, see updates/Maple8/de.

Significant additions and improvements to the symbolic capabilities in various Maple packages and procedures. For more information, see updates/Maple8/symbolic.

Improvements to the Maple graphical user interface (GUI). For more information, see updates/Maple8/gui.

Notes for users upgrading from Maple 7. For more information, see updates/Maple8/compatibility .

For more Maple news, tools, and tips, refer to the Waterloo Maple Inc. Web site http://www.maplesoft.com.