Lots of text for manual set



I found stuff I was doing in 1990 or earlier and put it
online at
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/macman


There is some text there, presumably from source originating
at some company, but several relatively "new" items.
Like
Learning Macsyma
Using Macsyma

and various chapters.

I have not looked over the contents, but I assume
some of it is in TeX, some in nroff/eqn.

RJF

I also found this, separately, which may not
correspond to that stuff....

overall plan: We need a collection of documents:

I.   What can you do with Macsyma (teasers for technical people)
   A. parlor tricks
      1. factoring
      2. checking identities
   B. interactive mathematics language
   C. help write fortran programs
   D. solve problems in closed form
      1. Laplace transform
      2. integrals
   E. Analytic approximations:  solution by taylor series, asymptotic 
series.
   F. Others.


(II) Introduction to Macsyma: first part of existing primer.

(III) Introduction to writing user packages in Macsyma: 2nd part of 
existing primer + more examples.

(IV) Macsyma user guide:
    A. Full, but informal description
       of the programming language syntax and semantics of the basic 
constructs
    B. Semantics of forms
       1. arithmetic operations
       2. comparisons
       3. sin, cos, log, ....
       4. special polynomial form
       5. special Poisson form
    C. Listing of commands by type and brief precis
       1. simplification
       2. Evaluation
       3. approximation
       4. Input/output
       5. system modification
   D. Error messages (alphabetically)

(V) Macsyma reference guide

   A. Implementation
       Lisp language base
       File system
   B. Listing of commands (alphabetically) and semi-formal specification
      (This corresponds to an on-line command index. One text-retrieval
       function might be "short description" or "help"; Another command
       would display fuller information, or even a program listing.
       Each command would
      be described by:
      name, example, and 1 sentence description. [short form]
       then (full description)
      name,
      aliases if any,
      number of required args and types,
      number of optional args and types,
        (possibly: introduction of keywords?)a
      number and type of value(s) returned
      principal flags which may affect the result
      functions or other commands which are used, and whose flags might
      affect the result
      algorithms used (references to bibliography)
      side effects, including messages that might be printed, expected
      time for completion of the command.
      examples
      known bugs
      location of source code for the function.
        The source code should include author(s) if known;  last revision.
        and comments indicating implementation details and functional
        characteristics.


(V) Installation guide.

(VI) References.


RJF