> 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?
Dear all,
I feel myself a bit appart from this discussion about the gui, since I'm
an old-fashioned console user; I really love maxima's ascii-art.
But now that we are openning our hearts, may I open mine too? My dream
is a better plotting environment. At this moment, we have (the default)
gnuplot and openmath, among others.
No doubt, gnuplot is a great plotting package, but there are some things
impossible or very difficult to manage from Maxima. Some days ago
Fateman pointed out interactive 3d graphics, and I would add images
(image processing, fractals), other interactive plots (graphs,
mouse-based parameter control), animations (very interesting from an
educational point of view), and some basic graphical objects in order to
make possible the design of all sorts of (statistical and other)
diagrams.
When someone wants to plot especial objects, he/she must read both
maxima's and gnuplot's manuals. This is another problem.
I prefer openmath's philosophy: you don't have a fully developed
plotting program at your hand, but a simple canvas (tk's canvas in this
case) and you have a complete control on what appears on it, and all
this stuff should be explained in maxima's reference manual. Some
problems arise now:
1. Which is the best tool to fit our needs? tk, wxwidgets, other?
2. Is this the right moment to begin such a project?
I know it's not an easy job, but as I said, it's my dream.
Best wishes
--
Mario Rodriguez Riotorto
www.biomates.net