On 12/1/05, Richard Fateman wrote:
> As a general rule, it is probably a mistake to say
> "I don't know what this does, so I'll take it out of Maxima".
agreed, i guess, except that it's clear enough what
lognumer does; the question is whether what it does is useful.
> In this case lognumer is still in Macsyma. It is
> set to false by default, and thus does no harm, except
> to make some programs clumsy, I gather.
there is definitely some harm, namely that its continued
presence makes it more difficult to program correct
algorithms for evaluation of logarithms.
> I suspect that lognumer somehow comes from the needs of
> calculus students who haven't learned about complex numbers
> and use Macsyma for their homework.
well, that doesn't seem like a pressing need, then.
backwards compatibility takes a back seat to consistency
and correctness, in my not so humble opinion.
for what it's worth,
robert dodier