On 11/20/05, Alasdair McAndrew wrote:
> 0: acos :(maxima.info)Inverse cosine function.
> 1: acosh :Inverse hyperbolic cosine (cosh) function.
> 2: cos :Cosine function.
That seems like a good idea. I'm not sure how it would
be implemented, though.
> Would this sort of thing require the re-writing of a vast amount of
> lisp or maxima code? Or wuold it be relatively easy to implement?
Maxima is printing the output of makeinfo here,
so changing would likely be somewhat involved ---
either modify makeinfo or hack the makeinfo output
or dump makeinfo altogether, all of which are more or
less painful.
I guess equipping each function with its own @node
(so makeinfo generates something different for each one)
could help, although that, too, is not entirely painless.
> Actually my favorite help system is that of Matlab, where the help
> text is embedded in the function file itself. So
>
> lookfor cos
>
> gives you a list of functions which include the string "cos", with
> short descriptions (generally the first line of the help text), and
>
> help cos
>
> gives you all the help.
Hmm, how about if you do "? cos" and there's an exact
match, you get just that match, otherwise you get a search
for "cos" as a substring. "?? cos" could invoke the inexact
search (even when there exists an exact match).
I agree that the help system can be improved,
and I'm interested to hear your ideas about that.
There are complications and trade-offs;
like politics, Maxima is the art of the possible.
For what it's worth,
Robert Dodier