User friendly front end for a MPS PC program

A mathematical computer programming system, MPS, implements the simplex algorithm developed for solving the linear programming (LP) problem. With the fast growing personal computer (PC) technology and the advent of software packages for the MPS PC, a class of learn-by-doing MPS users has emerged. Motivated by the fact that entering most LP data into a computer is a time consuming, confusing, and error prone task for the end users, the authors study the MPS PC user's requirements for LP data entry and describe the design of the user-friendly-front-end program to aid in this process. The program is implemented currently in LOTUS 1-2-3 macros; covenants on that prototype are provided.<>