problem with sbcl when it thinks it's not interactive

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Siver Andrey wrote:
> Hello, Maxima Community,
> I would like to say an opinion  (may be off topic here) that it's not good
> thing from methodological point of view when MAXIMA tries to ask something
> interactively.
But what can maxima do if the form of the integral depends on the sign of 
a, and you have not supplied this information via

assume(a>0);

or something? I see 3 possibilities:

1. Refuse to calculate this integral

2. Return an unevaluated 'if
This opens a *huge* can of worms

3. Somebody on this list suggested an interesting solution. Let the user 
to specify "sample" numerical values of all parameters. They will be used 
*only* for evaluating booleans like is(a>b) etc. The result produced will 
be correct in some neighbourhood of the specified point (whose boundaries 
are unknown).

I think it is a *very* strong point of maxima that it takes mathematical 
correctness seriously, and always (tries to) return the result which is 
correct in the specified region of parameters. Other systems happily 
return integrals which are wrong in the region I am interested in. So, 
questions are an importand (and good) part of maxima design, and should be 
retained. But it should be possible to suppress them, thus losing a part 
of functionality (I hope *not* correctness!!)

Andrey