Building maxima / mailing lists / sym package

Martin RUBEY wrote:

> > > In a different vein, I offer to translate the (french)
documentation
> > > of sym, if there is no translation yet and if there is somebody
> > > interested...
> >
> > Yes!  Interested!

I'm interested in the sym package and the documentation also.
I've been using the Google translator and trial and error to find
out what the commands do.

I used Martin's suggestions for the sym1.mac file and
load("sym") works fine with gcl/maxima on RH 7.3. Thanks for that.

I'm picking my way through Harold Edward's book on Galois
Theory and I'm trying to use some relevant Maxima
commands as I go along.

First I'd like to do some simple things with symmetric polynomials
like compute the representation for a symmetric polynomial
in terms of elementary symmetric polynomials.

(eg. (x - y)^2 = (x + y)^2 - 4xy = (e1)^2 - 4(e2) )

Does anyone have any suggestions or references for that
sort of thing? I'm looking at the examples for the sym
commands in the Maxima  (french) documentation.
I may start looking at GAP also, but I wanted to see what
I could do with Maxima first.

Thanks for any input.

L. Prevett
Mathematics Instructor
Cochise College, Sierra Vista, AZ, US
prevettl@cochise.edu