|I wonder what would the most
reasonable way to document my Maxima
|sessions. I don't need a perfect latex layout, but something like
|Maple's worksheets. A document should contain
|- all statements I put in,
|- Maxima's output (including graphics),
|- my additional comments (about the problem, I am trying to
| solve, the steps I took, my interpretation of the results).
|[...]
|I am just looking for a fast and easy documentation for every-day
|usage.
You can use the maxima logging feature writefile/closefile to capture
text commands and use the tex() command to set up graphical output.
I use Maxima on a GNU/Linux system so I also use the system()
command to call up gnuplot, R, gp, gap.sh, octave, pico, or whatever.
I like Maxima a lot because you can seemlessly go between apps via
simple text files and control the behaviour with custom configurations.
writefile("session1.tex");
...
[ maxima commands go here]
[use
tex(%);
after the command for tex/latex format]
...
closefile();
Use latex2html to manage large document structures.
\begin{verbatim} text \end{verbatim}
\begin{rawhtml} html \end{rawhtml}
$$ math $$
tags do 90% of what I need. (eh, I also use a script to cut
out some of the extraneous output from Maxima.)
Then from within Maxima
system("latex2html session1.tex");
Point your browser to the session1 subdirectory
on your file system to see the text/graphical output.
Edit session1.tex to clean things up, add graphics, etc.
run latex2html on session1.tex again.
---------
This approach is overkill for a single document.
I've found i useful for building large document
structures over a long period of time.
You would want a master document (bigdoc.tex) and the
session files would be referenced within that master document.
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\title{Big Project Document}
\maketitle
... blah blah ...
\section{Session 1 Title}
\include{session1}
...
\end{document}
Then run latex2html bigdoc.tex again to have all your Maxima
sessions rolled up into a nice, text based, easy to manage
document structure that is ready to move into a web space.
It is also appropriate when you are using Maxima on a remote
system with no graphics interface - the latex2html output
can go directly into the public_html directory and can be
viewed with a web browser.
Just one solution I worked out for myself using latex2html.
Don't know how much other people still use it or other
document converters like pdflatex.
L. Prevett
Mathematics Instructor
Cochise College, Sierra Vista, AZ, US