On Fri, 2006-12-08 at 16:21 -0500, sen1 at math.msu.edu wrote:
> 1. Is the menu item in 5.11? I can't find it in 5.10.
I just added it a week ago, for 5.11RC1
> I found that, if I wanted to install several different versions
> of maxima at the same time (testing the newer ones, and using the
> older ones with code that works with them), it is easier to use
> the sources.
yes, that's a good strategy. And "make; make install" works very
smoothly in Linux.
> I can easily put, say 5.9.3 in one directory, 5.10.0 in another,
> So, I would still ask that the html files be included in the
> *tar.gz source. Again, why not make two:
well, every time you use "make install" you are running a perl script
that creates those files for you. If I remember correctly, even if they
come with the tarball, "make install" will created them again.
People who really need those files are those who do not
build Maxima in Linux and use the lisp-based building method.
> Of course, users of the sources can do this by themselves, but
> how much is to be gained or lost with removing the html's?
As I said before, the tarball size is reduced from 13MB to 9.7MB.
In any case, 13MB is still small in my view, so I really do not
have strong feelings against those files.
> 3. Maybe a way to avoid the dependency issues with different OS's, is
> to include a spec file with the source (*.tar.gz) file so people
> can make their own packages. I was told that this is already
> possible with Ubuntu (maybe Debian), but I don't know if it is
> possible with Fedora.
That's a nice feature of the .deb package system. It incorporates a
method to handle dependencies; that's why in Debian and Ubuntu it is not
a big issue to know which version you have installed, because you simply
update the packages you want to update to the latest versions and keep
ancient versions of others that you do not feel a need to update.
Systems based on .rpm packages, as Fedora, do not have that feature, so
they usually have to tell you if the file is for Fedora2 or 4.
> A. I like Jaime's "graph2d" but it would really be nice if one could
> add all of the gnuplot options as in the case of plot2d. For
> instance, I would really like "fig" output, so I can add text,
> drawings, etc.
My initial intention was to make graph2d compatible with either openmath
or gnuplot. But as I was going to do that, Jim Amundson introduced the
"discrete" feature of plot2d which is similar to graph2d and uses
gnuplot. We also went into a discussion about a change of syntax for the
graphic functions and I put aside graph2d until we defined the new
syntax. When I have a chance I will try to make graph2d work with
gnuplot and I will write its documentation which is missing.
> Incidentally, I noticed that using the gnuplot option
> "linetype -n" with many different numbers gives one many colors in
> plot2d. It would be good to have this in "graph2d".
Do you mean using different colors for different sets of points?
you can do that in graph2d too, but I have not documented it.
> I tried openplot_curves, but there is little documentation. Can
> one add all of the gnuplot options there?
no, openplot_curves is specific for openmath. My advice is not to
use it; it mixes tcl syntax in its options, making it very hard to
use.
Cheers,
Jaime