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Getting Started
Sym is a tool for creating and manipulating symbolic content. By symbolic content, we mean both mathematical expressions and other symbolic content (source code is one example). Almost anything that can be represented as a tree of symbols can potentially be content in Sym. The topics in the Getting Started section of the documentation cover installing Sym and starting to use Sym.
Documents
Every document has two main components; the document content that you create and the libraries that define the objects and functionality available in the document. Documents will nearly always have a reference to least one library. Without any libraries loaded there would be virtually no functionality available in the document.
Creating and Editing Content
Content is contained in modules and can consist of both text and expressions. The content of a document is primarily contained in Document Modules.
Creating and Editing Images and Graphs
Images
Images can be added to modules either by copying and pasting or by inserting a file containing an image into the module.

Getting Started
Sym is a tool for creating and manipulating symbolic content. By symbolic content, we mean both mathematical expressions and other symbolic content (source code is one example). Almost anything that can be represented as a tree of symbols can potentially be content in Sym. The topics in the Getting Started section of the documentation cover installing Sym and starting to use Sym.
- Installing Sym
  Sym includes a Windows installer. The installation requirements and info about the install destination are listed below.
- Using Sym
  To get started using Sym, you need to understand the basics of how documents and content are created and edited.
- Documents
  Every document has two main components; the document content that you create and the libraries that define the objects and functionality available in the document. Documents will nearly always have a reference to least one library. Without any libraries loaded there would be virtually no functionality available in the document.
  - Creating a New Document
    Documents are created, opened, and saved in the standard way from the File menu, or by using standard keystrokes such as Ctrl + S. The following section describes the procedures for creating a new document.
  - Libraries and References
    The functionality in any document depends upon which libraries are referenced. A reference is an entry shown in the Document Explorer that indicates that the specified library is loaded into the current document. Libraries serve as a container for definitions of objects, commands and functionality.
  - Adding and Removing References
    References determine which libraries are included in a document. The libraries included in the document define the list of objects and much of the functionality that can be used to create and manipulate expressions in the current document. For example, if you add a reference to the Calc.eql library to a document, then the Calc library along with the Trig and Math libraries will be loaded in the document and there will be definitions and functionality for objects like limits, derivatives, and integrals in current document.
  - Online Documents
    Documents that are located online can be opened in Sym. These documents can be edited like any other document, but you must specify a directory and file name when you first save a document that was opened from an online location.
  - Customizing the Screen Layout
    The locations of the windows that make up the Sym application can be customizable by the user. Windows can be undocked and left floating, or re-docked in the same or a new location. The window and document configuration is saved when the application is closed. When the application is restarted, the last configuration will be restored.
  - Creating and Editing Content
    Content is contained in modules and can consist of both text and expressions. The content of a document is primarily contained in Document Modules.
    - Editing modes
      Keystrokes can be used to edit names of objects, text, numbers or to invoke commands on highlighted expressions. In some cases, a keystroke could be interpreted in several ways. As a result, there are three editing modes in the Sym application. The current mode determines how keystrokes are handled. Sym uses three different highlight colors to indicate the current edit mode.
    - Positioning Content
      In a Document module, content (both text and expressions) can be placed anywhere in the module just by double clicking in the moduele and then creating whatever text or expression you need. Content can be dragged with the mouse to position it in a document module but content can also be connected to other content to create something that behaves more like what you would expect in a typical word processor.
    - Creating and Editing Expressions
    - Creating and Editing Text
      Text can be added to Document modules. Text can be indented, bulleted or numbered in the usual way, either using the button bar at the top of the module or by applying commands.
    - Creating and Editing Images and Graphs
      - Images
        Images can be added to modules either by copying and pasting or by inserting a file containing an image into the module.
      - Graphs - Overview
        Graphs a created using objects just like any other expression. The objects used to create a graph define the data, the axes, the legend and so on. You can edit these objects by switching to the Standard notation. In the Document notation the actual graph is rendered rather than the editable objects that make up the graph.
      - Graph Components
        There are several graph component objects that can be added to the parameter of a Graph object to control how the graph looks. The components include the Equation and Data components that are used to display data on a graph and several components that allow you to control how the graph, axes, labels, and other parts of the graph look.
    - Exporting Content
      Content in a Sym document can be exported to other formats including LaTeX and HTML. You can customize the export process and create your own functions that will export content to a custom format.
- Commands
  Commands are used both to construct and manipulate expressions. Typically, single-character keystrokes are used to invoke commands. For example, the "s" keystroke normally runs the Simplify command on the highlighted expression.

Images

Images can be added to modules either by copying and pasting or by inserting a file containing an image into the module.

Images can be inserted into Document, Unit test and Object modules. Supported image formats include JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP.

In Document notation, an image should be displayed as an image, in Standard notation the image should be displayed as an editable expression. Other notations will also display images as either expressions or images depending on how they are defined.

To insert an image using copy and paste

Copy the image from any application that supports images. Highlight a term in any expression and paste the image (Ctrl + V).

To insert an image from a file

Highlight an empty box in any term of an expression, right click and select Insert image..., then select the image file to be inserted.

Setting the properties of an image

When an image is displayed on Standard notation it will be displayed as an expression that can be edited like any other expression.

The size of the image can be set using either the Height or Width property (or both). If a either the Height or Width property is used by itself, the other size will be scaled so that the image will still have the original ratio of height to width.

Alternately, the height and width can both be set which will cause the image to be displayed with a different ratio of height to width.

When an image is first inserted into a document, the Width property is set to the original width of the image.

Saving images to file

Images in modules can be saved to an image file on disk. Select Save image as..., select the type for the image file, and enter a file name. Supported image types include JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, and TIFF.