Getting started
This guide will help you on getting started with L'Math, especially if you haven't used such applications before.
Welcome! Let's start on the desktop.
Many modern applications, such as digital books, work directly in the web browser of your computer or mobile phone. L'Math, on the other hand, works as a standalone desktop application, which means that L'Math must first be installed on your computer. Instructions for installation can be found on a separate page in this guide. If you are using L'Math on a high school computer, the installation will hopefully be done by someone else.
Desktop App Basics
- L'Math opens its own window and has its own tab system
- You must save your work to a file. You also have to decide and remember where on your computer to save it.
- Files must be opened again, when you open L'Math. It doesn't try to guess what you want to do.
Start view
L'Math opens into a start view by default. There you'll find the latest update news, file shortcuts and a list of your recently used files.
In the top of the window, a tab strip can be found. There you'll see open tabs. Tabs can contain, including but not limited to, worksheet files, app settings, or even a browser view.
By clicking on the leftmost 'pencil icon' in the tab strip, you can return to the home view.
Changing the settings
Open the settings by opening the 'File' menu and choosing 'Settings', or by using the shortcut Ctrl + K (Cmd instead of Ctrl on Mac).
In the settings, you can change the language and theme, pick your favourite calculator type, change default fonts and styles, and change the options of PDF exports.
The settings also contain a tab for the automatic update feature, and a tab where you can restore backups of your saved lma files.
Worksheets
Create a new worksheet on the 'File' menu, from the start view, or with the shortcut Ctrl + N. After creating a worksheet, you will see a new tab, from and to which you can jump to from the tab strip in the top of the window.
When using L'Math, you may work on multiple files ( worksheets ) simultaneously. Every worksheet lives in its own file, which is stored on the storage space of your device.
Important about files
Every worksheet in L'Math is a single lma file on your hard drive. You need to save your work to some place on your computer, as the worksheets you create do not magically stay somewhere. You may enable automatic saving from the settings, so that you only have to save manually only once, when creating a worksheet.
As worksheets are basic files, you can copy, transfer or share them any way you want. Send them to your friend or teacher via email or a cloud service, for instance, or store them on a USB drive.
Pages in worksheet
Every worksheets contains one or multiple pages. Find all the pages in the current worksheet in the sidebar. Add a new page by clicking on 'Add page', or using the shortcut Ctrl + T.
Click on a page's name in the sidebar to open it. Now you'll see the page's content in the text editor.
Hover your mouse on the sidebar's page list and click on the 'cog' icon to open a page's properties. On page properties, the name, icon and highlight color of the page can be changed.
Pages can also be duplicated and deleted in the properties bubble.
Tip
Change the order of pages by dragging them with your mouse cursor.
Tip
Use page colors and icons to categorize them, or to mark succeeded or failed attempts!
Toolbar
Below the tab strip on the top, you will see the toolbar. On it you will find the special symbols and the text and math tools.
Below the special symbols, you will either find text, math or coding tools, depending on which feature you are using. When you are in the math editor, you will find the toolbar to be very similar to the Abitti math editor.
Find more on how to use the text editor and the math editor on separate pages.
Editing multiple files at the same time
L'Math enables you to edit multiple files at the same time on separate tabs. If you wish to see two or multiple worksheets at the same time, you can pop out tabs from the main window.
Pop out a tab from the main window by opening the 'View' menu, and choosing the 'Pop out to new window...' item. You can also right click on the tab in the tab strip to see the same option, or drag and drop a tab from the tab strip outside the main window.
Pop a tab back to the main window from the 'View' menu, or by right clicking the tab in the tab strip, or by clicking on the 'pop back' button in the top left corner of a window, when it's wide enough.
Changing the color of your worksheet
The icon color of a worksheet can be changed from the 'Worksheet' menu.
The color of a worksheet is only visible in L'Math, and doesn't apply the color to the actual file icon outside L'Math.