--- Andrea Riciputi <ariciputi@pito.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I've been trying Maxima and lurking the list for a couple of months.
> I've been a Mathematica user for years and I think Maxima could be a
> good candidate for a change.
>
> Anyway I have some problems and I'm sure you can help me:
>
> 1) I'm not able to use special functions because every time I try:
>
> load("specfun.o")$
>
> I get the following error message:
>
> Could not find `specfun.o' using paths in
> FILE_SEARCH_MAXIMA,FILE_SEARCH_LISP...
Um. Did you try load(specfun)$ ?
> Reading the file specfun.usg I've learned that I have install them.
> But the problem here is that all the .mc files have been renamed .mac
> while in test_specfun.mac the code says:
>
> translate_file("specfun.mc");
> load("./specfun.LISP");
>
> Why this mismatch??
Just a case of the docs not being current with the package, I believe.
Currently trusting most of the documentation on the share packages is a
poor risk. Although specfun is newer, the majority have not been
touched in decades.
> 2) Another problem comes with the documentation. Maxima Manual is
> very terse and it's hard to read. I saw a maximabook directory in the
> source tarball, but I was unable to generate it using make. Any hints
> here?
You need to have the proper setup installed - here's a copy of a README
file now present in CVS (I'm assuming you're usint 5.9.0 - it didn't
make it into that release) that describes what you need to handle it.
I guess you don't actually NEED emacs to build the pdf, now that I look
at the list. But if you want to use emaxima to do any editing you will
need it.
#README
Creating a PDF/PS/DVI file from maximabook sources
In order to generate these documents, you will need
to have the following components installed and
working properly:
Emacs
http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/
Included with most Linux distributions
Emaxima
Included with Maxima. See other docs for
how to install and setup Emaxima.
A TeX distribution with pdflatex - tested with teTeX
http://www.tug.org/teTeX/
breqn
ftp://ftp.ams.org/pub/tex/
Install this into an appropriate directory in your texmf directory,
then run texhash. On Gentoo Linux, for example, this would be the
procedure:
cp breqn094.tgz /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/
tar -xvzf breqn094.tgz
texhash
pdfcolmk.sty
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/supported/oberdiek/pdfcolmk.sty
Note that some Linux distributions include this, and some don't.
Safe
bet - put in in a folder with emaxima.sty.
Install this into an appropriate directory in your texmf directory,
then run texhash. On Gentoo Linux, for example, this would be the
procedure:
mkdir /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/emaxima
cp pdfcolmk.sty /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/emaxima/
cp emaxima.sty /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/emaxima/
texhash
In addition, you may need to increase your pool size in
your TeX distribution. This will probably be in a file
called /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf, or wherever
texmf.cnf is in your distribution. Some distributions
default to large enough values, so only change this if
you are seeing errors about pool sizes.
Available commands.
make pdf
This makes a basic pdf file.
make pdf-final
This makes a pdf file with thumbnails. You will need
thumbpdf working properly for this to work.
make ps
This makes a postscript file.
make ps4page
This uses the a2ps command to create a four page per
physical page postscript file.
make dvi
Makes a dvi file.
make clean
Removes all the usual TeX output files to allow for a clean run
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
http://tax.yahoo.com