How are features removed from other open source
code (e.g. linux?)
There are many features of macsyma/maxima that are
preserved because of inertia, and some of them have
even been preserved in Mathematica.
At one point I thought about writing a manual marking
certain features with a small icon of a toilet, meaning
"this is a feature we would like to flush".
lognumer hasn't bothered me, but perhaps you could
issue a warning message and drop the imaginary part.
There are times when you might end up computing
log(-3.0 + 1.0d-300* %i) ... where the imaginary part
is really the result of roundoff somewhere.
in commercial macsyma, log(-3) or bfloat(log(-3))
ignore the lognumer flag and return + %i*%pi or
a numerical approximation. They also ignore the logabs flag.
RJF
Barton Willis wrote:
>maxima-admin@math.utexas.edu wrote on 12/01/2005 11:29:36 AM:
>
>
>
>>I think we can make lognumer really hard to change to true
>>by adding it to some list kept by msetq.
>>
>>I think that the "killer application" for maxima, if there is
>>one, is education., so needs of calc students may, in fact,
>>be important in that context.
>>RJF
>>
>>
>
>(0) I think some Maxima features were added just because
>somebody thought it was cute at the moment. Inertia
>preserves the feature. I don't know, but it doesn't
>seem that every Maxima feature was subject to a rigorous
>review.
>
>(1) The 'logabs' option should keep calculus students
>and teachers happy.
>
>(2) When lognumer is true, I sill don't know what to
>do with log(1.23 + %i * 0.97). That's my question.
>
>Barton
>
>