Bug#791697: RFS: wxmaxima/15.04.0-1
Package: sponsorship-requestsSeverity: normal
Dear mentors,
I am looking for a sponsor for my package "wxmaxima"
* Package name : wxmaxima
Version : 15.04.0-1
Upstream Author : Andrej Vodopivec <andrej.vodopivec@gmail.com>
* License : GPL-2+
Section : math
It builds those binary packages:
wxmaxima - GUI for the computer algebra system Maxima
More detailed information about the package:
What is wxMaxima?
wxMaxima is a powerful graphical user interface for maxima, a program that is specialized in finding symbolic solutions for mathematical problems (which means it actually tries to find the formula that solves a problem, not the number the formula would result in).
A simple example what it can do would be:
-> a^2+b^2=c^2;
-> solve(%,c);
[c=-sqrt(b^2+a^2),c=sqrt(b^2+a^2)]
But it can find a formula that solves many types of differential equations, too:
-> dgl:diff(diff(x(t),t),t)=-x(t);
-> desolve(dgl,x(t));
x(t)=sin(t)*(at('diff(x(t),t,1),t=0))+x(0)*cos(t)
The actual output on the screen is much nicer, naturally, since the equations are displayed in 2D there.
It is to notice, though, that wxMaxima can be used for numerical work, too: It supports calculating with ordinary floating-point numbers if one requests this - but it will happily use arbitrary-precision numbers by default, exact fractions or bigfloat with a user-specified precision that is only limited by the amount of memory that is available.
Why does the package need to be updated?
The version currently packaged with debian (13.04) is over two years old. Moreover this old version has many bugs:
- In some locales many keys (for example in germany all hotkeys) didn't work in 13.04
- In version 13.04 drag-and drops drops about half of the parenthesis
- 13.04 crashes if it has to display sometimes not-too-complicated equations or if the save button is pressed while the program is calculating
The package is lintian-free. Currently it is marked as "orphaned". But I am willing to package new versions and upload them to mentors.debian.org on a regular basis. This is needed, too, since the next version, once released, will have a pack of features new, too including higher processing speed and syntax highlighting.
To access further information about this package, please visit the following URL:
Alternatively, one can download the package with dget using this command:
Reply to: