#  This is the user manual of GTKMathplot
#  Copyright (C)  2012, 2013  Ivano Primi  <ivprimi (at) libero (dot) it>
#
#  Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify the files
#  of the user manual of GTKMathplot under the terms of the GNU Free 
#  Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the
#  Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts,
#  and no Back-Cover Texts. 
#  You should have received a copy of the GNU Free Documentation License
#  along with GTKMathplot. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html>.
 
* INTRODUCTION

GTKMathplot is an interactive plotting program for GNU/Linux, Unix(R) and 
Windows(R) based on GTK+, a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical 
user interfaces, and on the Cairo graphics library.
GTKMathplot requires at least version 2.18.0 of GTK+ and version 1.6.0 of
Cairo to be successfully built and run.

With GTKMathplot you can display and eventually save to a file the graphics
of bidimensional curves, tridimensional curves and surfaces. To accomplish
this you have to specify the cartesian or parametric equations describing
the mathematical objects you would like to visualize.

GTKMathplot has been made in such a way that the basic usage of the program
should be intuitive for every high school student with good mathematical
knowledge. University students of Engineering, Physics, Mathematics or
natural Sciences should need no explanation at all to start using
GTKMathplot proficiently.
From this point of view, GTKMathplot differs from popular plotting programs
like GNUplot: also people proficient in Mathematics need to read a user manual
before they can start working with GNUplot.

However, GTKMathplot is not so powerful as GNUplot and friends; in particular,
GTKMathplot does not provide a scripting language to work with it 
in a non-interactive way, nor supports contour plots.
Despite of this, GTKMathplot provides already 90% of the basic GNUplot features.
Some features that I would like to add in the near future are:

- Visualization of two- and maybe three-dimensional vector fields,

- Support of user-defined constants in the cartesian / parametric equations,

- Contour plots of three-dimensional surfaces and data.

GTKMathplot is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License,
or (at your option) any later version.
GTKMathplot is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License 
for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with the program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

If you would like to contribute to the development of GTKMathplot, you are
free to do it as long as you comply with the conditions stated in the
GNU General Public License.
Mind that GTKMathplot is "free software", in the sense explained
at <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>.
I decided to release it under GNU General Public License since I want that
it remains free software.

For questions and issues related to GTKMathplot you can contact me
per email by writing to <ivprimi (at) libero (dot) it>.
