Yigal Weinstein wrote:
> I am sorry Ray I think some (if not all) of what I wrote was poorly
> thought out.
> I did not mean a plot of a delta function I simply meant plotting a
> Heaviside function - step function - using signum etc.. (which is kind
> of trivial)
>
> ray> For the case of definite integrals, you'd have to teach the
> ray> integration routines about delta and it's properties. Currently,
> the
> ray> integration routiens are in Lisp, so you'd need to know Lisp"
>
> Oie vay, gasp that sounds like a lot of work.
> Is this the only way to calculate the definite integral etc. or the
> best?
>
You can use SAGE (which uses Maxima). I asked a similar question on this
list
a long time ago. I forget the reply to my question but it was probably
similar to the reply you got. The difference was I don't want to learn Lisp.
(And even if I did, I don't have the time.) However, I needed these
functions
to construct examples in my teaching. So I wrote them in Python
and called Maxima (using pexpect) when necessary. It *was* a lot of work.
The convolution of two piecewise-defined functions especially
was a real headache (BTW, AFAIK, no other CAS does that computation,
even the commercial ones). I can tell you that the plotting functions were
fairly easy to write compared to some of the others. That is about the
extent of
what I can say on this list because further details get off topic.
Though ultimately the programs are hybrid Lisp/Python, the part
I wrote was pure Python and that's the only part I know about.
> Some questions on Lisp and this project then:
> How much Lisp would I need to know?
> That is how deeply in your opinion do I need to go into the guts of
> Maxima for this project?
> Can you point me in the right direction to begin coding if this is the
> only "real" way?
>
> Thank you.
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>