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Mathwise and Windows NT - Precautions

Mathwise is a 16-bit application and as such can experience problems when installed on NT based systems. Most 16-bit applications experience these but they usually cause few difficulties to users. However, since Mathwise has to manage and run a great number of files and materials, potentially distributed in many locations, the problems can become more obvious.

The problems arise from 4 causes.

  1. The use of long (more than 8 characters) directory names and directory names containing characters (such as <space>) disallowed under Windows 3.1.
  2. The possibility of mapping network drives to long drive names (aka Universal Naming Convention - UNC) under NT.
  3. The sophisticated methods of setting privileges and sharing permissions under NT.
  4. Problems that some of the third party software used by Mathwise to run courseware material.

Solutions

We have found that Mathwise will work best under NT if you observe the following six precautions.

[1] Do not install the Mathwise system or courseware material on paths that contain long (greater than 8 characters) or 'forbidden-character' bearing directory names. The permitted characters are the following fourteen special characters:
_ ^ ! # % & - { } ( ) @ ` '
as well as the letters A to Z and the digits 0 to 9.

[2] Do not connect to the network drive containing Mathwise using an NT long drive (UNC) name. Instead map it to a single letter drive name. For example if, from a client machine, Mathwise is located in the following NT network directory:

\\NTServer_1\Apps\Mathwise
then you should map this drive to a single letter drive thus:
N:\Apps\Mathwise
The short cut you set up to run Mathwise should then point to
N:\Apps\Mathwise\mathwise.exe
and the Start In directory set to
N:\Apps\Mathwise.
[3] Ensure that all Mathwise file and directory permissions are set to Read Only (RX) apart from the assessment directories to which write access should be given. Do this first. Then set Share Permissions to the same.

[4] Ensure that mw.ini is edited correctly for the 'view' from the client machine. This applies in particular to the [modules] and [associations] sections. See Appendix 5 of the Courseware Manager Manual, also the Customisation Tutorial  for more information on editing mw.ini.

As a brief example if you install Mathwise to the C: drive of the server, say into C:\apps\mathwise, and the modules are copied into the \modules sub-directory of this, then the [modules] section of mw.ini will contain entries such as this:

m1grph=c:\apps\mathwise\modules\m1grph\m1grph.mwx
etc.
If Mathwise is then run from a client, where the network drive has been mapped to N:, then Mathwise will not be able to find the modules. The entries should therefore be altered to read:
m1grph=n:\apps\mathwise\modules\m1grph\m1grph.mwx
etc.
or
m1grph=modules\m1grph\m1grph.mwx
etc.
You should also make sure that entries in the [associations] section of mw.ini for text and help files point to the correct Windows directory for the client machine.

[5] The courseware authoring system Toolbook which much of the Mathwise material is authored in is known to have difficulties with fragmented NTFS partitions under NT4. This is apparently due to Toolbook's incremental loading of data which is frustrated by disc fragmentation. The only solution to this is to ensure that any NTFS partition to which Mathwise is installed is properly defragmented (this requires a third party utility since a defragmenter is not included with NT4). Of course ensuring that server drives are defragmented regularly should be a standard procedure for any network administrator in order to maximise performance.

[6] Under NT, if one 16-bit application crashes, all other 16-bit applications also fail. It is, however, possible to force the application to run in its own ‘virtual machine’ so that if it crashes, the others do not. This is done by selecting the shortcut's properties and checking the ‘run in separate memory space’ check-box in the ‘shortcut’ tab.