WIMS technical documentation

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Examples of what you can do with WIMS

The current version 4.29a of wims has several applications which demonstrates (non-exhaustively) what one can do with a wims system.

• Take a look at the animated plotter: it allows you to plot curves and surfaces with zooming, deforming and rotating effects, more easily as you may possibly imagine.
• The game Q-Puzzle gives a very good idea of how wims can provide a convenient way to combine multimedia means and abstract mathematical notions.
• The game-exercise Coincidence-freehand shows the possibility to create interactive graphic exercises of a new style.
• The exercise Correspondance gives an idea of the possibility of embedding javascript interactivity into a wims application.
• The exercise Accordance shows the possibility of linking different wims applications: except for the easiest level, such an exercise is practical only if the user can use computer to solve a linear system. Now such a solver (another wims application) is available directly in the exercise page, via a hypertext link. In order to teach the student to choose the appropriate tool, some irrelevant links are also added.
  Please notice that the lack of direct data communication between the two modules is only a choice of the design of the module, in order to make the student type the matrices.
• The tool Function illustrates the possibility to create pages which are at the same time powerful and easy to use. By linking a plotter (gnuplot), a symbolic calculator (Maxima) and a numerical calculator (pari) at backend level, it allows the user to click on a root (or a local extremum) he sees on the curve, and get the value of the root (or local extremum) at arbitrary precision.
  To achieve this, softwares are dynamically called at backend. First, gnuplot is used to draw the curve in the given interval. When the user clicks on a point, gp is called to try to find a root in the neighborhood of the point. If it fails, Maxima is called to compute the formal derivative of the function, and gp is called again to find a root of the derivative in the neighborhood (which will be the local extremum).
• This document itself is an illustration to the fact that wims can provide an easy way to dynamically reorganise contents of a document. By changing a parameter, contents of the document can be grouped, split, or chosen, in various ways. (Remark that this document is itself a wims module.)