mySoftware List

A list of programs I use.

Ansys: Extermemly powerful finite element analysis software (FEA). It has tons of element types and is very programmable. It blows away all other packages including NASTRAN. The only solution that may be close is ABAQUS which provides scripting with Python.
APL+Win: This is a nice version of APL2 but Dyalog APL is probably the best.
MicroAPL's APLX is a very solid APL2 interpreter at a good price.
Cygwin: Provides a BASH (Bourne Again Shell) shell with a large collection of GNU tools. It's sort of like having Linux on Windows. It will run X too.
Cygwin installation help
Firefox: Forget Windows Exploder, use this full featured and stable web browser.
GCC: This is probably the most important open source packages there is. Virtually all GNU programs are complied with GCC. This C/C++/FORTRAN/Ada/etc. compiler is technically advanced and has "long double" support which is one of the few compilers which will take full advantage of the FPUs 80 bit IEEE floating point format.
GNU C Library (libc): C compilers are about useless without a good C library. And here is a great one.
GNU Scientific Library (GSL): The library provides a wide range of mathematical routines such as random number generators, special functions and least-squares fitting. There are over 1000 functions in total. For numerical integration check out QUADPACK.
ImgBurn: Very good free software for ripping and burning CD, DVD and DVD-DL disks.
Also check out CDRDAO
winLAME: winLAME is an encoder for several audio formats, including mp3 (MPEG Layer 3), Ogg Vorbis and more. winLAME lets you set up the encoding process with an easy-to-use wizard-style user interface.
MathCAD: The best WYSIWYG math word processor around. It's not much good for programming, but it let's you call external programs.
MATLAB: Matlab provides an interactive environment and an array based programming language similar to APL's. It has an extensive function library and robust plotting capabilities. Mathworks provides many add on modules such as Simulink and the Control System Design.
PDFtk: PDFtk is a simple command line tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents.
Perl: Perl is excellent for text processing and web CGI scripts. It is also has complex number support and a million other modules. See CPAN. Perl comes with Cygwin and MinGW or you can use ActivePerl too.
RPN Calculator 1.3: This is the best non-programmable RPN calculator around. It was written by Bill Menees in 1996. If you want to try his newer fancy programmable (version 2.0 and 3.0), check out http://www.menees.com/.
SSH Secure Shell for Workstations: A very good SSH terminal that replaced CRT and other telnet and rlogin terminals.
Thunderbird: This MUA gets better all the time and is the only one I've found that uses the same file naming convention under Linux and Windoze. This allows you to have your mail on a common server and then access your mail from either OS. Cool!
Tk-Solver: Powerful equation solving and plotting program. It is organized with worksheets similar to Excel but is a much better engineering tool than Excel in most all aspects. It will also integrate with Excel very nicely. It has a powerfull programming lanugage built in which is similar to C.
Version 4.0 has an annoying security feature which ties the license to the C: drive's Volume ID. When you reformat the C: drive or buy a new computer, etc. you have to reassign the Volume ID to match the one you registered the software with. This can be done with VolumeID obtained from http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/volumeid.html. Here is an example of its usage.
Ultra Edit: The worlds best windoze editor! I've used this editor since 1997 and Ian continually makes it even better. It is perfect for programming and any other plain text file editing. It's powerful column editing feature is rare among editors, but very useful. It has spell checking, hex editing, file conversions and a ton of other features. It's very fast too. It has good syntax highlighting support. Get my ansys syntax highlighting wordfile here: Ansys Wordfile To use the ansys wordfile, just paste it at the end of the UltraEdit WORDFILE.TXT accessed under the Advanced->Configuration... menus. Also get the MATLAB wordfile while you're at it.
gVim: The most powerfull text editor on the planet. It has the best syntax highlighting support, is programmable and allows text to be filtered through any program you want. Its unique command mode make it the most hated editor for newbies and the most efficient and loved by users that have a working knowledge of the commands and extended capabilities.
Ansys syntax highlighting files: vim_ansys.tgz

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Last modified: Friday, 25-Sep-2015 18:14:32 MDT