Error conditions for maxima vs commercial code., also, who owns our name?

--- Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> I think that the error handling from the commercial code
> is not very well designed, though it may be better than
> maxima's.
> 
> I think that every error message possible should be logged
> in some way, with an explanation of what might have caused
> it.  It therefore helps to have a unique word or number
> as a prefix, so they can be sorted.

That sounds good.  Two issues come to mind - how best to handle it
within maxima, and whether or not each package included in maxima
should have to also integrate itself into the error system first.  My
thought on the second is that it should if it is to be included in the
main distro, and that means the system needs to be well thought out and
structured, to minimize the effort involved.  I readily admit ignorance
of this - is there a "correct" way to set up such a system?

> Some errors in macsyma throw you into a lisp break, which
> is probably not what most people want.  There is some
> debugmode:true option, but that may not be what people
> want either.

I think lisp mode, at least for beginners like myself, doesn't help in
the least - it just generates more confusion.  
 
> By the way, it occurred to me that there may be some
> other users of the name Maxima for software.  There
> are several I found in 2 minutes with Google.  a CAD tool,
> a router tool, an animation tool, a middleware package.
> There is also a Nissan automobile model.
> 
> Just thought you should know.

Hmm... do you think we should try to find a name no one has used yet? 
My guess would be since none of those software products are in the
mathematical software game they are different enough not to cause
confusion, but that's just my guess.  I know KIllustrator got into
trouble, but I think that was because they were trying to do something
similar to Adobe Illustrator.

Oh, I've been meaning to ask you about that large list of integrals you
have on you web page - what exactly does expt do?  Is it different from
exp?  I've been thinking it might be worth the trouble to convert that
file into a maxima batch file, to use for test purposes, but I'm not
sure what the best way would be.  Is anyone familiar with the current
make test setup?

CY

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Buy the perfect holiday gifts at Yahoo! Shopping.
http://shopping.yahoo.com