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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.
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.
The SymCommands Example File
In the example files there is a file called SymCommands.equ. This file covers the use of many of the commands in the Sym application.

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.
- 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.
  - Creating and Editing Commands
    Commands allow you to manipulate expressions. Each command defines the function that will be executed when the command is applied to the highlighted expression. Commands typically also have a shortcut key assigned to them.
  - The Result List Pop-up
    The result list pop-up provides a way for the user to select a result when a command returns multiple expressions.
  - Commands Used to Create and Edit Expressions
    The Backspace, Enter, Delete, and Insert keystrokes are all tied to commands so that the action of these keystrokes on expressions can be modified and extended as new libraries are created.
  - The SymCommands Example File
    In the example files there is a file called SymCommands.equ. This file covers the use of many of the commands in the Sym application.
  - Default commands
    Some of the commands are created by default because we need these commands to exist even if they aren't defined in any of the referenced libraries. Creating these commands allows the appropriate default behavior to exist for these keystrokes even when no libraries are referenced.

The SymCommands Example File

In the example files there is a file called SymCommands.equ. This file covers the use of many of the commands in the Sym application.

To open the SymCommands example file, you can select Open start window from the File menu and select the SymCommands.equ file from the list of example files on the left. If the example files are showing on the left there is a checkbox at the bottom left of the Start window called Show Getting Started. Just check this box to show the Getting Started list of example files.

The SymCommands example file covers the Command Window and many of the commands that are typically shown in the list. The set of commands that are available will change as you add or remove libraries from the references of the current file.