Adding new object types WAS: Operations on inf

>>>>> "Stavros" == Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu> writes:

    Stavros> 1.  (*) text/plain          ( ) text/html           
    Stavros> On 3/8/07, Barton Willis <willisb at unk.edu> wrote:
    >> 
    >> I've always hoped for a straightforward way to add new objects to
    >> simplus and friends -- arrays, intervals, big oh, little oh, quad
    >> precision floats, ... By straightforward, I mean a way to add new
    >> objects without hacking simplus and friends.
    >> 

    Stavros> Let's use ((bigfloat simp interval) ...), ((bigfloat simp quadfloat) ...)
    Stavros> etc. to represent new data types. We have the bigfloat package take care of
    Stavros> dispatching.  There are some places in Maxima which break the bigfloat
    Stavros> abstraction (notably checking for sign or zero by looking inside), but we
    Stavros> should be able to remove those pretty easily.

I'm guessing that Barton was thinking of something more CLOS-like.  I
think it would fit in pretty well with number-like objects.  It just
doesn't fit in very well with the rest of maxima.

Ray