Re: binomial(x,x) => 1, but binomial(-1,-1) => 0

> > Of course, this should be done interactively.
> 
> Doing things interactively is appropriate in many cases, and Maxima is
> good at that.  

Yes, I second that. I just think that we should maintain this, too! Hence:

* fix the bug that the answers don't get killed after use. This might be 
non-trivial

* add the appropriate questions for binomial and sum. I think this should
be rather straightforward.

> What I think we need to work on more is the non-interactive case, where
> the value involves conditionals or delta functions or whatever.  
> Unfortunately, Maxima is currently not very well set up for
> conditionals.

Very true. One remark *from the top of my head*: Maybe we should have some
global settings that influence the number of conditionals given. I thought
that it was quite good what Mathematica started (giving answers somewhat
like [0/; n>0]) when I heard the argument that this would only make the
output less comprehensible. So I could imagine two steps:

* generate the exact answer (this is the part which has to be implemented
first)

* implement a system that allows for "natural assumptions"

> I don't want to discuss this here right now, but Barton and I have been
> talking about this, and anyone who's interested in joining the
> discussion should write us.

As you may have noticed, I've nearly stopped contributing apart from some 
more or less stupid remarks. The reason is threefold: 

* I mainly do my stuff (generating various objects and statistics about
them) in lisp now, using maxima only to process the data.

* I think I'll go for axiom in the mid-term future. Hence I'm not to keen 
about spending hours tracing maxima internals. (also, I'm a bit frustrated 
because of my failure concerning the taylor bug I tried to chase.)

* I work quite hard on maths, sorry, no time.

However, this might change, too.