On 9/6/06, Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Much of the documentation is colored by the extensions made by the
> commercial macsyma. The user guide is probably a reasonable place
> to start. It is here:
> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/macsyma/docs/userg.pdf
I've looked at the commercial Macsyma documentation on your
web page and frankly it doesn't seem very useful to us.
It has the defect of being written in a War & Peace style, as if people
are going to keep it on their nightstands for those sleepless nights.
Furthermore the documentation of functions which Macsyma has
in common with Maxima is generally similar to what we have already.
Finally there is the problem that someone could try to cause us
legal problems by claiming anything adapted from the Macsyma
documentation is a derived work. I don't care if that is a remote
possibility; a single, baseless legal challenge could destroy this
project, so we should steer very far away from that.
> It is difficult to construct documentation for a complicated software
> system. Just look at the proliferation of books on software topics like
> Excel, Word, Photoshop,... C++, Java...
We will know that Maxima has really & truly arrived when there
is a Maxima book from O'Riley, with a picture of (what else?)
Cucurbita maxima (i.e. a pumpkin) on the cover. (Tip o' the hat to
Barton W for that one.)
FWIW
Robert