Xmaxima on Mac OS X



> As I said in my previous reply, xmaxima is known not to work. Since my
> previous message had no effect, I will elaborate: The command line
> interface to maxima has completely changed. The layout of the installed
> files has also completely changed. There has no effort yet to modify
> xmaxima to reflect these changes, but it is next on the list of things
> to do.

Just a point of clarification.  xmaxima for Maxima-5.6 works
fine and initially I thought that is what Justin was trying
to build based on one of his emails where he says:

    The same goes for 'maxima' itself.  I downloaded (but have not yet 
    built) maxima 5.6.  Is this the version I should use?

I thought this was the case until he captured and sent out
the error message below.

    initialisation file `/SandBox/sb/src/Maxima/maxima-
    pre59/src/maxima-clisp.mem'
       ^^

Also IMHO, while knowledgeable people like you beat 5.9 into
shape, people wanting to use older releases should be
supported if at all possible; though mentioning the version
number would reduce such confusion.  Any way, that is what I
was trying to do.  Apologies if that caused any mental pain.
[never lower your mind-shields :-)

> If someone wants to volunteer to make the changes before I can get to
> them, please let me know. However, there are several things that need to
> be considered that won't be obvious simply by getting it to work with
> one lisp on one platform, so we'll have to talk about it.

Making it work on one platform is a good start!  A lot of the
pain of making xmaxima work can be reduced if it simply calls
the maxima script with appropriate options.

Now that I know more about xmaxima than I intended to, I will
try to help out after 4/15 (I bet even maxima is not good
enough to accurately model the f!@^%#^%ng tax law).