Dear Cliff,
----- Original Message -----
> --- "C Y" <smustudent1@yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- "Nikolaos I. Ioakimidis" <ioakimidis@otenet.gr> wrote:
>
> > But perhaps the best choice for you just now is to study Cliff's
> > book and Cliff has been so kind to make it available in PDF through
> > an e-mail attachment. (This is surely preferable to attempting to
> > prepare this PDF file yourself from the LaTeX sources distributed
> > with Maxima 5.9.0 in the directory \doc\maximabook after unzip.)
> > Many thanks to Cliff for his kind help and really so careful work
> > with Maxima.
>
> It's not just mine - many authors have contributed to this.
Yes, I know, there are contributions by many authors. Many sincere
apologies for the above incorrect statement of mine.
> If I get a lot of requests for this I can upload a PDF, but it is most
> definitely not ready for prime time.
I would recommend that, if possible, you could consider this
possibility (i.e. of uploading a PDF), where you may wish to clarify
that it concerns a preliminary and incomplete version. (To be sincere,
I do not believe there are serious errors present.) We would be
grateful to you for this help too; it's difficult (for a user of Maxima)
to work with the LaTeX files. In the future, I would prefer that the
LaTeX files in Maxima be accompanied by the PDF file as well.
(I believe this is permissible under GPL.)
> > The final point would be the preparation of a new Maxima
> > Reference Manual taking into account the present commands'
> > status of Maxima 5.9.0 (and in the share library too) and including
> > instructions, comments and examples for all of the commands (after
> > actual tests of them) in a uniform way, this is very important. Mike
> > may wish to undertake this task, I am not sure, but it requires much
> > time and effort for a complete revision of his present so interesting
> > and already very useful DOE-Maxima Reference Manual. In fact,
> > I consult it quite frequently.
>
> That is a truly enormous task, but is one that must eventually be
> attempted. It is not and cannot be a task of any one person.
> Eventually, I hope it will be an automatic part of adding to Maxima
> that the documentation is updated. I don't know if we are at the point
> of starting to create that system yet, but I fear the time draws near
> ;).
> CY
I agree, this enormous effort should be undertaken, but the
presentation should be made in a uniform way with the same
information, the same abbreviations and notation and the
same style of examples for all of the commands, system
and option variables, etc. (This is not the case now with
both of the Maxima Reference Manuals.) Therefore, a
team work, but with just one responsible author to give
the instructions (I mean strict instructions) and decide
(as is the case with Jim in the Maxima releases).
To be sincere, I am already attempting to start a very, very small
subset of such an effort for my students in Greece restricting my
attention to just a few Maxima commands after a selection
according to our own educations interests (and, unfortunately,
knowing very little about Maxima so far), but I have no other
alternative (especially in the Greek language) to help my
students with using Maxima at this moment.
Many thanks again and best regards,
Nikos