Breaking up large numbers in (GNU Emacs) imaxima?

Anything pushed to an extreme size is likely to force display
to make some compromises. Examples include
very large matrices
integrals and summations with very large limits
very long polynomials (e.g. thousands of terms)
with deeply recursive structure that must be "parsed"
by a human over many pages.

The solution to some of these problems is to
have special display programs. e.g. there is one
for Poisson Series, which tend to have many terms.

Addressing the "long integer" problem is just
a small part of the design space.  
RJF


Alasdair McAndrew wrote:

>Well...sometimes it's nice just to *see* a large number all laid out. 
>True there's not much information to be gained from it, but still -
>when everything else is so nicely formatted to fit the space
>available, why not large numbers, too?
>
>cheers,
>Alasdair
>
>On 11/29/05, Richard Fateman  wrote:
>  
>
>>If you have large integer numbers, you should
>>consider how you are going to use them. For
>>example, write a program to put the numbers in
>>an array, and print the elements of the array
>>one per line.  It might also be useful to print
>>large numbers along with their log (base 10), to
>>see the number of digits.
>>
>>I think that using Maxima's default printing which
>>is oriented towards applied mathematics expressions
>>for number theory is ok if it works.  If it doesn't
>>work for number theory, that's not necessarily a
>>reason to change the display -- just write an appropriate
>>output routine for your special needs.
>>
>>What do you do with an integer that is 2000 characters long?
>>Can you even tell if it is 2001 or 1999 digits?
>>
>>RJF
>>
>>
>>Alasdair McAndrew wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>A large integer is not broken up into several lines unless display2d
>>>is set to "false".  But it's a pain to keep changing the settings of
>>>display2d depending on the output.  Is there any way of changing the
>>>display2d variable depending on the output?  So that, for example if
>>>integerp(output) returns "true", then display2d is automatically set
>>>to "false" for that output only?
>>>
>>>Alternatively, is there any way of keeping display2d set to "imaxima"
>>>but break up large integers?
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>Alasdair
>>>