The Elements of Programming Style for Making Class Materials with Figures

Abstract

Mathematics teachers want to enable students to understand mathematical objects clearly and want to use their original class materials with accurate and impressive figures. To do so, it is suitable to use both TeX and Computer Algebra System (CAS). Nevertheless, the graphic output of CAS is not suited to the TeX document of the material. To improve it, since 2006, the authors have been developing KETpic as a plug-in based on CAS. The use of both TeX and KETpic based on CAS enables teachers to produce their original class materials with accurate and impressive figures. They wish not only to produce their original class materials with figures but also to use the class materials with figures produced by the others. To realize that objective, a good KETpic programming style is needed. For example, when educators produce a figure along with their material by KETpic, they wish to perform symbolic thinking, i.e. they create a KETpic program in a mathematical drawing procedure and concentrate their energy on qualitative improvement of the figures while they recognize the global image of the figure. Symbolic thinking is a factor in good elements of KETpic programming style. The authors investigated other good elements of KETpic programming style using a documentation approach, which is the method of checking teachers' records in detail for their improvement. In this paper, the authors present four good elements of the KETpic programming style.