Re: Rats; Fwd: [Soc2006support] Letter of intent for Maxima project to participate in SOC as a mentoring organization



Irwin Zaid wrote:
> I also agree with Nicolas, in the sense that I 
> would like to see Maxima compete with Maple and Mathematica as soon as 
> possible.
I share these sentiments as well, but out of curiosity, what should be 
the first steps taken to accomplish this goal?

The first thing that comes to mind for me is a notebook program, 
something where you could write some commentary, include a nice-looking 
equation, maybe imbed a plot.  Maybe some sort of OpenOffice plugin or 
something.  From what I can tell, there isn't anything like that yet (if 
I'm wrong, please don't rake me across the coals, just kindly point me 
in the right direction).  It seems like iMaxima might come close but I 
can't set it up to tell.

Another consideration might be enhancing the documentation.  I would 
love to help with some of these things, but I have no idea of how to 
write Maxima code.  I may not be the only one in this boat.  I can do a 
pretty good job of taking a derivative, but writing code to do symbolic 
differentiation, well...

Just my two cents on the matter.

-Ron