To elaborate on Barton's suggestion---
The simplest approach may be for you to look at the
reference book for Maxima, as well as the reference
book for one or more of Maple, Mathematica, Mupad, Axiom,
Matlab/Octave, Mathcad, Excel, S, ... Also the user-contributed
files.
[most, perhaps all, are on-line]
Look for items missing from Maxima but present in one of
the others, that you would be interested in seeing in Maxima,
that you understand how to implement, or are willing to learn
how to implement, and have the time to work on.
then write documentation for how this new feature should work.
Show it around a little to see if (a) it already exists but was
not documented in Maxima; (b) other people have ideas about
how to do it and would help you.
Then based on what you have learned, implement the feature,
set up test cases, improve the documentation so that it
reflects reality instead of just the design. Write a paper
explaining what you've done, how to further improve it, how
it is useful, etc.
Advantages of this approach:
1. You take advantage of other peoples' previous designs. Sometimes,
as in the case of open-source user-contributed code, perhaps
all you need to do is to translate it to Maxima.
2. You are targeting something that can be done (has been done).
3. There is some a presumption that someone other
than you is interested enough in this feature to have done it elsewhere.
There are some improvements that do not fit in this pattern, but there
are lots that do.
RJf
----- Original Message -----
From: "Barton Willis" <willisb at unk.edu>
To: "Ron Crummett" <rcrummett at uidaho.edu>
Cc: "Robert Dodier" <robert.dodier at gmail.com>; <maxima at math.utexas.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 2:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Maxima] user interfaces in general
> -----Ron Crummett wrote: -----
>
>>Agreed. Well, I'm willing to help, but as I have
>>said before I am not really sure where to start helping.
>>What (aside from the pretty exterior) are the most pressing needs?
>
> Most pressing need? I say it's additional Maxima developers. If
> you're good some chunk of mathematics, start there; if you're
> good at making pretty exteriors, that would be a good place
> to start.
> Barton
>
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