“MathSoft, the makers of the much vaunted and extremely well
known packages such as MathCAD and Axum, has pushed ahead into new
territory for their data analysis package called SPlus. MathSoft
now has a version of SPlus for Linux. Those of you who are in
academia and other R&D areas are likely quite familiar with
this data analysis software package. For others like myself, the
Linux version is my first look at SPlus at all, although I’m fully
familiar with MathCAD and Axum from my time as a student in
experimental physics….”
“SPlus as a package boasts the ability to use C language modules
to do tasks that S was not designed to perform. This is handy if
you have data formats from home grown software for which no
conversion module exists. Just write your own module and plug it
into SPlus….”
“The one drawback to the installation process I had trouble with
is the need for a license key to enable the software. For this you
have to run a small program called HOSTINFO, write down the
information it spits out and then send that to the licensing people
at MathSoft for them to calculate and return your key. While this
is not unusual, it was all very bothersome and I had to ride them a
bit to get the key. All told, it took about a week to actually get
my license key to unlock the software. To be fair to MathSoft
however, they did tell me that my request e-mail had never arrived
and they would look into problems with the e-mail server. I should
also mention that I also tried to call them directly twice and had
their “press one if you…” call system hang up on me twice. I may
have called at the wrong time because the PR person I contacted
also said their call system was giving them fits.”