> > 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.
> What we want is the ability to graphically display large expressions
> without incurring an unreasonable speed penalty. Furthermore, it would
> be very helpful if subexpressions were mouse-selectable. The question is
> whether the solution to this problem will utilize TeX itself. I don't
> think so, but that doesn't mean that we will remove any of the
> tex-related functionality we already have.
So far, I've seen the following criteria:
(1) the ability to gradually transform a maxima interaction into a
beautiful paper.
This would involve:
(a) saving and restoring maxima sessions
(b) (probably) producing TeX output at some point
(c) letting the user put text that is not meant for maxima
somewhere between the formulas.
(2) a readable output that is mouse-selectable
While I currently think that for entry of formulas, the normal
notation is the most convenient, the output from maxima is more
readable if it is rendered by some prettyprinter (either the
ASCII pretty-printer or something that generates TeX-like formulas).
To reuse part or (while we're at it) whole of the term output, you
would have to either
(a) select some of the pretty-printed output and somehow reinterpret
it as a maxima expression. This is difficult if the pretty-printer
together with the graphical shell doesn't provide some way of
reconstructing the input from several selected formula subcells.
(b) provide a means to access the output in normal notation.
This is not very convenient.
(3) breaking lines in fractions and generally large terms.
This is convenient for (1), although you could always do it by hand
and probably would if the automatic line-breaking doesn't do exactly
what you want.
This would also be convenient for (2), but wouldn't be helpful for
(2a), either. I also think that it is not strictly necessary in this
case iff it can be done by simply displaying the large formula and
letting the user scroll around.
The avalilable front-ends that we currently have are:
(please correct me if I say something wrong)
- xmaxima
I like the ability to display help below the actual interaction.
As far as I know, it has no support whatsoever for doing (1),
and (2) is limited to the ASCII prettyprinter without any possibility
of selecting anything.
If I read it right, the ASCII prettyprinter does handle (3).
- emaxima
is specially built for (1), don't know about (2), but (3) seems to
be an issue if I read that right.
- TeXmacs
is probably not exactly what you want for (1), since you cannot put text
between the lines of a maxima session. The output looks really nice, and
(2a) works to some extent (you can select expressions with fractions,
squareroots and +,-,*; selecting an integral doesn't yield anything
useful) If you get some large term (e.g. with sum(a^i,i,1,20)), it
breaks the lines, but if it's a fraction or a root (as in sqrt(sum(...)))
you have to scroll to see it all.
Well, and it's not exactly fast, but not so slow that you cannot use it
productively.
IMHO, something like emaxima for TeXmacs could definitely be a killer app.
Not only it would look really nice (TeX fonts with antialiasing) but you
could also export a LaTeX file from your TeXmacs document.
Regards,
Yannick