how can I specify sort order in Maxima output?

Stavros Macrakis wrote:

> On 5/18/07, Vadim <vadim at vkonovalov.ru> wrote:
>
>>
>> output of Maxima expressions is good but sometimes I want to prioretize.
>>
>> Most of all I would like to see %i at the most right end of expression.
>> Also similar variables should be sorted alphabetically, IMHO.
>>
>
> Maxima currently sorts them in reverse alphabetic order on display, with
> symbolic constants then numeric constants at the end.
>
> This is because the usual convention is that x,y,z are variables and
> a,b,c
> are parameters, so it likes to put terms in x before those in a.
>
> It also tries to avoid leading "-", so it displays 1-x but x-1 (with the
> default negsumdispflag:true).
>
> Flags affecting the formatting of formulas are:
>        powerdisp pfeformat %edispflag exptdispflag sqrtdispflag
> negsumdispflag display_format_internal
> but these don't affect most of what you want....


thank you a lot for clarifying even further, it helps a lot.



>
> I agree that %i+1 looks ugly, but I have not thought about the
> question very
> generally.  If you can specify exactly what you want, it can no doubt be
> programmed....


initially I thought that I want %i to go to the right like in a+b i but
then I realized that it goes first even more often (like exp(%i*phi)) so
there's no general approach, it seems.

Anyway, current situation in Maxima is quite sufficient for my current
needs, but may be I'll adopt Maxima output to my needs, in some future.

On a slightly related question, how do you think, is it reasonable to
recognize not only single greek letters in TeX output, but also any
greek variables followed by digit like alpha0, so in following session:

(%i11) tex(alpha^2)$
$$\alpha^2$$
(%i12) tex(alpha0^2)$
$$\alpha 0^2$$   <---- something like this

Is there a reason agains this?

Best regards,
Vadim.