How to get diff to yield result in terms of original function

Hello Stavros,

you wrote:

--- Stavros Macrakis <stavros.macrakis@verizon.net> wrote:
> The gradef approach may also be useful for another reason.  There is
> no good representation for the derivative f' of an arbitrary 
> function f in Maxima.  To represent f'(x), you must use:
> 
>     at(diff(f(qqq),qqq),qqq=x)
> 
> Note the use of an obscure dummy variable name qqq to avoid
> substitution problems.

If there were a design notes page of some kind, I would now
go write "Maxima could use a good representation of the derivative
of an arbitrary function". 

There are large-scale features that come up from time to time
on the mailing list, and when that happens it seems common to
rehash the topic, because it's not easy to see what's been
discussed before.

I think someone proposed last month to set up a wiki to handle
design feature discussions. I think that's worth consideration.
It's easy to set it up at SourceForge; I have done so for 
another project. 

regards,
Robert Dodier

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus