Hi Jordi,
> At any rate, I would like to be able to contribute something to Maxima.
Terrific!
Since you're coming from Maple, maybe you have some
ideas to contribute to the Maxima wish list:
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Design%20Notes
> where can I learn about the Lisp dialect that Maxima is written in?
Maxima is written in Common Lisp. Maxima is not very complicated,
but it is not very strongly structured either, and much of
the internal stuff is not documented. Oh well.
About Maxima itself, see
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/outline%20of%20Maxima%20internalshttp://maxima.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Maxima%20internals
and browse the mailing list archives,
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/maximalist.html
I've had best luck by browsing via the Gmane interface
(link on the maximalist.html page).
About Common Lisp, a web search will turn up a lot of stuff.
Some people recommend the tutorial by Peter Norvig,
I haven't read it myself.
> how else can I contribute to Maxima? Translation?
> Documentation? Testing?
Here are some ideas for you.
(1) Write test scripts and documentation for stuff in the
share directory. Maxima/share/ is our catch-all.
Lot of interesting stuff there, if only we could remember what it does.
We have made some progress w/ tests & docs, but I
don't think it is finished yet.
(2) Review the bug reports
(http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=4933&atid=104933)
starting with the oldest ones, and classify them and
try to determine if they still exist or not. Some of the reports
have been reviewed lately, but many have not.
(3) Help maintain binaries for one or more platforms;
library incompatibilities make it necessary to recompile
Maxima for every Unix-like platform. Ports page:
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Maxima%20ports
Let us know what you think. There is certainly no shortage
of things to do, if none of that suits you.
Thanks for your interest in Maxima,
Robert Dodier