> --- "James Amundson" <amundson@fnal.gov> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Yes. Absolutely.
Dear Jim,
Dear Jesper,
Dear Colleagues,
Naturally, I agree too, it's ugly and not editable. On the contrary, in
Mathematica and Maple it's at least beautiful; I am not sure about
editable, I doubt.
But now, with Maxima I mean, I am very pleased to cut the output
(both the direct output and the related tex command output too I
mean) and paste it directly in my LaTeX TeX file and, next, work
with it, having in front of me, in the tex file, both the ugly (but
readable,
2D) Maxima mathematical output followed by the related TeX output
(available also there, one after the other) and when ready with my
text cut the direct Maxima output, leave just the TeX Maxima output
I wish to be there and process my TeX file with LaTeX. This has
been impossible for me with Mathematica.
In fact, Mathematica's Notebooks are very beautiful, but for some
reasons they are not the best choice for a serious document or a
book (especially in Greek with no hyphenation and no direct
support of the characters of the Greek alphabet themselves). I
strongly prefer LaTeX, which has also much better mathematical
formatting facilities.
Therefore, what I suggest is in the future, if possible, is to have a
very nice output by Maxima (such as, probably, in TeXmacs now
as far as I know), but also to have the same facility to cut and paste
the output to a LaTeX source TeX file, an ASCII file I mean, without
formatting by Maxima. I am afraid that a nice Maxima output will
have many formatting instructions inside it and this would be extremely
inconvenient for me in the above-described cut and paste approach
in which I wish this ouput to be clear in a LaTeX ASCII TeX file
environment in front of me to be able to read the Maxima results
and write the text around them.
Perhaps you may decide for the user could have the option to
choose when starting Maxima between the present XMaxima
approach and a new (let's say something like a TeXmacs)
modern approach. The first for me (and others too of course)
when using Maxima's output (and it's TeX equivalent too) in
LaTeX and the other again for me when not using this possibility
and for my students (who do not use LaTeX at all) continuously
Could this be possible?
I have suffered with Mathematica's undoubtedly so beautiful
output in the past. I wish, if possible, not to suffer again.
Best regards from Patras,
Nikos