On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 02:27:21PM -0400, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
> I have added simplifying.lisp to share/contrib for those who want to
> experiment with it. Thanks to Barton for testing it and pointing out a bug
> which is now fixed.
>
> As with all contrib-directory code, this is not part of standard Maxima and
> it may change, perhaps radically, benefitting from the suggestions by Robert
> and others.
I have to admit that the pattern/rule/simplification stuff in maxima
is completely opaque to me. I think that the manual is particularly
poor in this area from the viewpoint of learning the material. (I've
read through it several times, but never figured out how it works)
Based on reading here, I think that Stavros has a somewhat different
opinion on how simplification should work. I'd like to encourage some
kind of discussion here about how simplification does work, and what
the shortcomings are, in hopes that
1) I might figure out how simplification rules work
2) We might figure out whether there is a "better" way to do
simplification stuff.
3) We could produce some material that would go into the manual to
help teach users how it all works...
--
Daniel Lakeland
dlakelan at street-artists.org
http://www.street-artists.org/~dlakelan