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

Hi all,

Ron Crummett wrote:

[...]

> TeXmacs is very slow.
> wxMaxima is a favorite of mine, but (as far as I can tell) cannot mix 
> commentary or embed plots.
> iMaxima looks nice, but so far I can't get it set up right.  If I 
> can't get it set up right, then neither can my wife, and if she can't 
> then most people won't be able to either.
> xMaxima...well, the output is not the nicest-looking, now is it?
>
[...]

So, seems that the  TeXmacs comes closer to all the functions you want, 
but the complain its that is not  fast enought.

>
> I am coming at this from the perspective that Maxima has the 
> propensity to be on par with Maple, etc.  But at the present time 
> there is too much behind the scenes setup going on to attract 
> mainstream users.  People like pretty-looking things that they can set 
> up with the click of a button.  I don't think it's there...yet.  But 
> it can be.  I would love to hand in a nice-looking document full of 
> commentary, plots, and equations and say "Why yes, I did all of this 
> on Maxima."
>
[...]

It's seems pretty difficult from the perspective of free software to get 
a monolithic piece wich make all that. Seems that the classical  mantra 
of "one component wich makes one thing and makes this well" its the 
approach tho follow. Maybe a light weight TeXmacs will do the writing 
part, Maxima (Yacas or other) will do the algebraic part and gnuplot, 
for example will do the graphics part. We need a more integrated user 
experience, without details concerns for he/she.

Cheers,

Offray

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