Regarding the infobox on p. 36 ("The homescreen and the MathPrint OSs"):
1) It says that programs will run noticeably slower unless you use the CLASSIC command at the beginning to turn off MathPrint. Is this true even if your program doesn't use any MathPrint features?
2) How do you use MathPrint features in your program anyway? I created the following test program:

:MATHPRINT
:Disp 1/3 (where the "/" character looks like a thick slash that I generated using the n/d template command)

When I ran the program, the homescreen output was just "1/3". I thought it would be a MathPrint style fraction.

Help appreciated.

No, it actually appears that MathPrint can only be run from the homescreen, although there may be some certain assembly system calls that can use this functionality. I believe that there is a nice comparison test located here: http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8824

When you say MP can only be run from the homescreen, do you mean it can only be entered manually on the homescreen by users? If so, why does Christopher say to add the CLASSIC command at the beginning of TI-BASIC programs? What's the point? I'm just not clear on any of this.

Check out the link, I believe that CLASSIC allows for certain functions such as Disp and Output to be executed many times faster than with MathPrint. Somewhat odd, but I guess TI thought that it would be cool to set it up that way.

I would recommend not actually including CLASSIC in your programs, because it's not a known token to any 83+ OS or non-MP 84+ OS and will immediately result in the BASIC parser raising an error. You should just expect that users of MP OSes are aware of this issue and will turn MathPrint off themselves when running BASIC programs in which text printing speed is important.

EDIT: Oh, and you can't utilize MathPrint's pretty printing in BASIC programs.

Very helpful. Thanks!

Oh, I see. thanks!

Yes, this is true. To summarize the information people have already posted in this program, with MathPrint enable, the OS needs to run much more code for each piece of text displayed to the homescreen, even when no MathPrint features are used in that particular piece of text.
You cannot.