On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 23:16, Jesper Harder wrote:
> I agree. IMHO the current 2D output in Maxima has two main problems:
>
> 1. It's ugly.
> 2. It's not editable. I.e. not suitable for selecting subexpressions
> and feeding them back to Maxima.
I'll point out that if the presentation of expression output in Maxima
were built on a Lisp Machine's Dynamic Windows, or on CLIM, or even on
the similar (but unexported) stratum of Allegro Composer, it would not
be hideously difficult to present the output so that subexpressions
would be selectable, representable in 1D form in the input area, and
thereby editable.
I'm not suggesting anyone actually do this, because a lot of
liabilities come along with using any of these UI systems. I'm not
even hinting that someone should duplicate these facilities somehow as
open source in Maxima itself, since the liability of employing a
particular odd UI modality still remains. But I'm only pointing out
that this kind of facility is not impossible, and in fact, it wouldn't
even be particularly difficult.