On Mon, 2004-09-27 at 04:07, Chris Sangwin wrote:
> I wanted to first thank all the developers for working on and releasing
> Maxima 5.9.1. There are some improvements which I have been quietly
> waiting for and which work perfectly. Thank you.
>
> In a previous post the issue of a review was mentioned. I have a role in
> the UK based Learning and Teaching Support Network. We provide a network
> through which colleagues in HE Maths Stats and OR can share good practice
> in teaching. (See http://ltsn.mathstore.ac.uk/)
>
> One of our major activities is in producing the paper based, and online,
> newsletter MSOR Connections. (Again see
> http://mathstore.gla.ac.uk/articles/ )
>
> We do carry reviews of software packages, although they are usually
> commercial since these tend to have more publicity with a major
> release. There is every reason to carry reviews of well supported open
> source packages also.
>
> I would like to commission a review of Maxima. However, I would be happy
> to wait for a future release if the developers think this would be
> better. Any comments please?
It would be great to have a review of Maxima in your newsletter. Whether
or not you should wait depends on many things. We have a large number of
identified bugs that I hope can be fixed in the 5.9.3 release. I would
like to see the next few releases of Maxima appear much more quickly
than the previous two. However, experience tells me that I should make
no promises about dates.
If you were to do a review soon would it be possible to have another
review of a subsequent release? The first review would be valuable
input.
> Also, which interfaces should be included? eg maxima, xmaxima, TeXMacs
> interface and so on.
That's a fine question. The answer partially depends on the platform(s)
in question. On Linux, I think the command-line and TeXMacs interfaces
are the most compelling. On Windows, Xmaxima should be included.
Opinions vary greatly on this point.
--Jim