Desmos API v1.7.0 released

[desmos-api-announce]

Desmos is very happy to announce the release of version 1.7.0 of the Desmos API. 

• Change log

• Documentation

This release is part of our scheduled release cycle, and we recommend all users upgrade to this version. Benefits of upgrading include:

• remaining consistent with what students see on high-stakes tests where Desmos is embedded in the test platform.

• offering an experience for students in your product similar to the one at desmos.com.

• ensuring the best interaction with the latest browsers and platforms.

We will help all of our partners upgrade to version 1.7.0 in a timely fashion. Please email Chris Lusto (ch...@desmos.com) with any questions. 

These technical release notes are intended for developers who incorporate the Desmos API into their own applications. We ask kindly that you not forward this email to your customers. If you’d like a user-facing summary to send to your customers (districts, teachers, etc.), or for other product inquiries, please contact your partner representative or email partne...@desmos.com.

New Features:

Version 1.7.0 introduces a set of new features for creating more powerful interactions, visualizations, and simulations in the graphing calculator. It also includes important performance improvements in the core parts of the calculator responsible for typesetting and compiling user input, as well as improvements to spoken math for screen readers.

1. Actions. An action is a set of update rules that can be triggered by events in the calculator, such as clicks or the passage of time. Actions open the door to richer interactions on the graph paper, as well as time-based or recursive simulations.

2. List comprehensions. List comprehensions introduce a powerful new syntax for constructing and transforming lists. A comprehension consists of an expression body and one or more list variables, and a new list is created by evaluating the expression for each value of each list variable. Comprehensions make it much simpler to collect repeated computations and form Cartesian products.

3. Other list niceties. We have added a unique() function that filters out duplicate list entries. It is also now possible to make lists of polygons. Combined with actions and list comprehensions, it is now much easier to make complex polygon-based animations and interactions.

4. Compiler and typesetting improvements. The compiler, which transforms user input into functions for sampling and plotting, is now faster and more robust in the face of very large or complicated expressions. MathQuill, our typesetting library, also received performance improvements that make selection and rendering of large or deeply nested expressions more efficient.

5. More natural spoken math. The way that math is read when using a screen reader has been updated to speak shorter forms of common numeric fractions and exponents.

6. Updated functions keypad. The functions menu in the onscreen keypad has a new, simplified design. Buttons appear in a single flat panel rather than in categorized tabs. This makes it easier for users to find what they are looking for without having to predict which tab to click.

New API Features:

1. The actions constructor option in the graphing calculator controls whether or not actions are available for use. When true or false they will be completely enabled or disabled. When set to the default ‘auto’ value, actions will be enabled, but some UI will be hidden until a user constructs an action or loads a graph state containing actions.
2. The audio constructor option in the graphing calculator allows any generated audio—such as the sounds played aloud in audio trace mode—to be muted.
3. When the trace option is set to false, clicking an image on the graph paper will no longer select it.
4. When the capExpressionSize constructor option is set to true, limit expressions to 500 LaTeX tokens. In many cases, tokens are single characters, but LaTeX commands like \sin count as a single token no matter how many characters they contain, and LaTeX source whitespace does not count as a token (so 1 + 2 counts as 3 tokens even though it has 5 characters). Typesetting performance is more directly determined by the number of tokens than the number of characters, so this change allows more accurately restricting only those expressions that could cause slow math layout.
5. The list of supported languages includes 11 new, professionally translated languages. Catalan, Hungarian, and Ukrainian are no longer currently officially supported.