On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
> You would like to prepare a batch file starting with an existing
> session. In general, I hesitate to suggest to new Maxima users to RTFM
> (Read The F***ing/Fine Manual), because the manual is not particularly
> Fine. But in this case, the manual and the online documentation are
> pretty clear.
What I didn't find in the fine manual, is the fact that there
exist (at least) three different file formats used by maxima:
1) the "batchable file format" which contains mere calculation
statements (no (C)-labels, no maxima output) - this is good,
if you know, what you are going to do.
2) the "writefile() format" which records the terminal
interaction, but cannot be reloaded - this is good for
documentation.
3) the "save() format" which saves labels and
statements in some kind of internal maxima language and can
reproduce sessions in some way.
For the kind of explorative use, I wish to make of maxima, (3)
should be the best way: "save everything, in case you need to
recall it later". But here I find two issues:
a) To save a complete session one should use the statement
(C98) save("file_name",all);
But reopening maxima and doing
(C1) loadfile(file_name);
results in:
Load failed for file_name
-- an error. Quitting. To debug this try DEBUGMODE(TRUE);)
When I name every single line in save() like
(C98) save("file_name", c1, d1, c2,d2, (etc.) );
instead, the session will be completely reloaded. But typing
this statement would be quite tiresome.
b) There should be a way to start Maxima with label (C99),
because lower labels will be overwritten sooner or later.
Regards,
Uli.
+-------------------------+
| Peter Ulrich Kruppa |
| - Wuppertal - |
| Germany |
+-------------------------+