On 12/1/06, Yigal Weinstein <yigal.weinstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Maxima is a full symbolic computation program. It is full featured doing
> symbolic manipulation of polynomials, matrices, rational functions,
> integration, Todd-coxeter, graphing, bigfloats. It has a symbolic debugger
> source level debugger for maxima code. Maxima is based on the original
> Macsyma developed at MIT in the 1970's. It is quite reliable, and has good
> garbage collection, and no memory leaks. It comes with hundreds of self
> tests."
Well, I agree this should be revised, if only to be more careful to
emphasize only the important stuff (I wonder when was the last time
someone ran the Todd-Coxeter code), and cut the ad-speak
("full" this-n-that, "quite reliable").
> to better fit itself within the gnu world.
I think we fit in pretty well at present -- basically Maxima has a
tendency to absorb other stuff that seems useful & is licensed
appropriately. Naturally I hope that other projects are doing
likewise with Maxima.
> To conclude the original post and responses point to an observed - whether
> it really exists is not at issue - vagueness of purpose for Maxima. This
> could be remedied by a short discussion by the developers and an ad hoc
> statement created which upon criticism could easily be ameliorated.
Well, I guess I'm hesitant to attempt any such statement.
It seems like the main result would be a discussion which
goes in endless circles. We seem to be making pretty good
headway without any formal statement of goals;
let's not spoil a good thing.
All the best,
Robert Dodier