newbie question re expand



Stavros Macrakis:
>>I assure you that very few people will run demo("tutorial").
> 
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> It also seems perverse to have a default that we expect *new* users (as
> opposed to experienced users) to have to change.  Users do not come to
> Maxima to learn how to customize, but to get mathematical work done.
> Once they discover it is useful for their mathematical work, only then
> will they be willing to invest more effort in learning things like
> customization.
> 
> 
>>In my experience, I almost never type something like c5.
>>Except maybe ''c5 to do f(x):=''c5.
> 
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> 
>>I frequently type an old label like d5.  If we allow %5 to be
>>a shorthand for %out5, that might be ok.  or %[5]  or running 
>>from the current line, % is previous, %% pre-previous, %%% etc.
> 
> 
> I think %5 is OK, but %[5] is not, since (a) it already has a clear
> compositional meaning -- take the 5th element of the value of %; (b)
> that is a common and useful thing to do (selecting one solution to an
> equation).  Anyway, % or %in or %i (my favorite) is a trivial change to
> Maxima, and %[5] or %in[5] is not.
> 
> 

I think that %# and %, %%, %%% is a very sensible and convenient choice 
for output.  The replacement for C#  E# might be
   %i#   %t#
   %i#   %l#
   %in#  %lin#
or finally nostalgic
   %c#   %e#

But the important question is - do we *really* want to incorporate such
important change into 5.9.1 ?  How about documentation, xmaxima, TeXmacs 
etc ?  I venture to suggest postponing new line numbering scheme till 
5.9.2 (not later).



-- 
      Vadim V. Zhytnikov

       <vvzhy@mail.ru>
      <vvzhy@netorn.ru>