Re: Maxima on debian

[Boris Veytsman <boris@plmsc.psu.edu>]

> From: karlheg@bittersweet.inetarena.com (Karl M. Hegbloom)
> Date: 17 May 2000 22:25:14 -0700
> 
> 
>  I believe there is a Maxima package now, either in Woody or in the
>  works.  I have one installed that I grabbed out of `incoming' one
>  day...

Interesting. Does it work well? Here are some problems with the Maxima
I compiled. I wrote a letter to Schetler, but he did not respond :(((


Here is the copy of my letter.
==================================================================
Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 13:21:15 -0400
From: Boris Veytsman <boris@plmsc.psu.edu>
To: wfs@fireant.ma.utexas.edu
Subject: A couple of questions about maxima-5.4

Dear Prof. Schelter:

I just compiled and installed gcl-2.3 and maxima-5.4. They are
great. Many thanks for your great work. It was nice to hear that after
all the year DOE saw the light and allowed the GPL-like distribution
of Maxima code. 

I have been using Macsyma from Macsyma, Inc. for several years. I am
glad to see that the free version is very much comparable to the
commercial one.

The graphic capabilities are awesome. The mgnuplot program is very
good: something which I need badly for a long time.

I have a couple of problems and wishlist for enhancements. 

I compiled gcl & maxima on a Linux system (glibc-2.1.3, kernel
2.2.14). It compiled fine, and `make test' gave succesfull
results. However, there are still some glitches:

1. The `make install' command does NOT install mactex.lisp and
   manual.demo in /usr/local/lib/maxima-5.4, I ought to copy them
   manually. 

2. The demo command seems to be broken:
---------------------------------------------------------
(C1) demo(array);


batching #/usr/local/lib/maxima-5.4/demo/array.dem
(C2) 
(C2)                           SUBSCRMAP : TRUE

_
(D2)               /usr/local/lib/maxima-5.4/demo/array.dem
(C3) 
--------------------------------------------------------

It puts me into command line mode again instead of prompting

3. Example command is also broken:
-------------------------------------------------------
(C5) example(romberg);


/usr/local/lib/maxima-5.4/doc/manual.demo:315:Incorrect syntax:
Illegal use of delimiter &&
&&

^
(C6) 
-----------------------------------------------------

Now, some enhancements I'd like to see -- if it is possible to
implement.

1. mactex.lisp outtputs plain TeX. Most people nowadays use LaTeX. The
   main difference is in fractions -- TeX syntax {a\over b} is taken
   over by \frac{a}{b}. Here is a small diff I did to mactex.lisp to
   enable this behavior:

3d2
< ;; Changes by Boris Veytsman, May 2000: changedd \over to \frac.
479c478
< ;;(defprop mquotient ("\\over") texsym)
---
> (defprop mquotient ("\\over") texsym)
485c484
<   (setq l (tex (cadr x) (append l '("\\frac{")) nil 'mparen 'mparen)
---
>   (setq l (tex (cadr x) (append l '("{{")) nil 'mparen 'mparen)
487c486
<       r (tex (caddr x) (list "}{") (append '("}")r) 'mparen 'mparen))
---
>       r (tex (caddr x) (list "}\\over{") (append '("}}")r) 'mparen 'mparen))


2. Is it possible to enable readline in gcl and maxima? It would be
   great to use arrows to edit the command line and use history.

=================================================================


Another question: does the Camms' package include mgnuplot -- a really
cool tcl wrapper for gnuplot? It is included in the upstream Maxima. 

-- 
Good luck

-Boris
http://www.plmsc.psu.edu/~boris/