Maxima doesn't have to do everything, it just needs to be useful.
So, yes one can blend in lots of little functions that catch
various special cases. Such code has a downside---bugs,
maintenance nightmares, unwelcome interactions with the rest of
Maxima, and the problem of writing non-misleading documentation.
Deciding whether the benefits outweigh the risks rests mostly on
opinion and not fact. Usually /share is the best place for
rare special-case code. That way, it won't bother those users
that don't need it. Another Maxima principle seems to be that if
you want it and it isn't there, you'll need to do it yourself.
Barton
Kamaraju Kusumanchi <kk288@cornell.edu>
Sent by: maxima-admin@math.utexas.edu
10/22/2004 11:30 AM
To:
cc: maxima <maxima@math.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: [Maxima] Newbie - integrate piecewise function
In that case, implementing just the trivial case should be a good start.
We can always include in the documentation that this is where the
capability ends...
raju
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