Some proposals for Maxima 5.9



Jay Belanger wrote:

> "Vadim V. Zhytnikov" <vvzhy@mail.ru> writes:
>
> ...
> > 3)  I suggest to merge /elisp and /emacs in one
> > directory. Although I like emaxima very much
> > but old emacs modes can be still useful especially
> > for debugging.
>
> The reason that there are two directories is so that the
> maxima/emaxima stuff wouldn't be mixed with the maxima-mode stuff.
> (Nothing wrong with that, I just thought I'd let someone else make the
> decision to do it. The files in the two directories have different
> names, so there is no problem with putting them together, but there is
> much functionality overlap.  (The dbl stuff is included in maxima.el,
> by the way.))
> Some of the files in the elisp directory could be removed (or put into
> storage):
>   the add-defaults seem to be used for the spec file, and
>    could be included in the spec file;
>   the *-to-texi are used to convert information files to texinfo
>    format, and so don't seem currently useful;
>   the ansi-doc and gcl files are for gcl, and should be part of gcl
>    rather than maxima.

I'd keep gcl related files. The point is that unlike clisp and cmucl
gc-maxima is independent executable which can be used
as gcl interpreter. So gcl emacs modes could be useful for
gcl-maxima. But I would not insist.

> The bookmode file is used for reading the .bk files that were put into
> storage.  The .bk files are nifty little interactive worksheets to be
> run in emacs, I guess Bill Schelter used them for the classes he
> taught.  If they're not around, then bookmode.el doesn't need to
> be around, either.
> The rest (dbl.el, maxima-mode.el, sshell.el (needed by maxima-mode.el)
> and smart-complete.el (needed by sshell.el)) seem to be necessary.
>
> Jay
>

Some note about maxima emacs modes and new build/install system.

Traditionally extra emacs modes are enabled by adding several
lines (add-defaults.el) to site-start.el. Recently new more
convenient system appeared. Site-start.el remains
untouched. Instead site-start.el contains code
which process all elisp scripts in certain system
directory, say
  /etc/emacs/site-start.d/*.el
So to enable maxima modes I just place maxima.el
into /etc/emacs/site-start.d. Sample maxima.el is
(borrowed from add-defaults.el)
-----------------------------------------

;;;BEGIN maxima addition
(autoload 'emaxima-mode "emaxima" "EMaxima" t)
(add-hook 'emaxima-mode-hook 'emaxima-mark-file-as-emaxima)
(autoload 'maxima-mode "maxima" "Maxima mode" t)
(autoload 'maxima "maxima" "Maxima interaction" t)
(autoload 'dbl "dbl" "Make a debugger to run lisp, maxima and or gdb in"
t)
(autoload 'gcl-mode "gcl" "Major mode for editing maxima code and
interacting with debugger" t)
(setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.ma?[cx]\\'" . maxima-mode)
auto-mode-alist))
;(setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.li?sp\\'" . gcl-mode) auto-mode-alist))

;;;END maxima addition

(setq load-path (cons "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/maxima" load-path))

-----------------------------------------
The last line is generated during Maxima build stage.

So maybe such emacs installation style
should be addressed in the new Maxima build system
as an option.

Best wishes,

Vadim


--

[ Vadim V. Zhytnikov  <vvzhy@mail.ru>  <vvzhy@td.lpi.ac.ru> ]