It occurs to me that something I've worked on and still
have students working on, might be relevant for some
users. I would not want to distract people from doing
something more valuable, as suggested in my previous note.
Anyway....
Microsoft programs like Excel and Powerpoint
(and to a less-compatible extent) Word,
allow a programmer to attach, usually with a short
Visual Basic "macro" program, nearly any other
program.
For example, I think there are such links from
Excel to Maple, Excel to Mathematica.
We have programs that link Excel to (Allegro Common ) Lisp, allowing,
for example, Lisp (and in principle, Maxima)
to operate on a range of cells in Excel.
There are numerous examples of links to other
programs from Word -- an
example is the Equation editor program.
Maxima could be made to work in much the same way.
[The interface to the equation editor is rather complex --
the equation is not a returned data structure, but the result of
instructions to construct an equation.]
I have students looking at hand-writing or speaking
mathematics into programs like Word, using this
technique.
So you could use, as your notebook, some familiar
program, with display /compute sections.
This would be an alternative to TexMacs, in some sense.
We have also hooked up the handwriting program to
TexMacs, but have encountered some bugs having to
do with opening multiple windows/ canvases to write on.
(see "math speak and write" project on my home page)
RJF