I don't know what the documentation categories really mean, but it seems to
me that the top level contents are in considerable need of revision. For
example section 70 "Stirling" does not deserve the same position in the
outline of Maxima as "special functions". And it would seem that
Differential Equations should be a subset of Equations.
The use of the term "function" is still bad. A mathematician's concept of
the term is different from the Maxima usage, which can be either "built-in
command" or "user-defined procedure [returning a value, which is always the
case...]" or a Lisp function. I think that users actually write
procedures, in the more common programming-language sense. (That is, they
have, or can have, side-effects).
The current organization could be improved, I think, by looking at the
Mathematica "tree" of categories.
This is reflected in the directory structure of the add-in files, not
necessarily the documentation, which is much shallower in depth.
Good luck.
RJF
> -----Original Message-----
> From: maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu
> [mailto:maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Dodier
> Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 9:41 PM
> To: maxima list
> Subject: documentation categories revisited
>
> Hello,
>
> I have been tinkering with the documentation categories stuff again.
> You can see the results, such as they are:
> http://maxima.sourceforge.net/misc/tmp-categories-html/maxima_87.html
> I believe that at this point the results are useful, and not too ugly.
> Yes/no ?
>
> The code is a menagerie of scripts. You can see them in cvs:
> http://maxima.cvs.sourceforge.net/maxima/maxima/doc/info
> Look for: category-macros.texi extract_categories1.awk
> extract_categories1.sed extract_categories.sh
> Maybe it would be better to implement this stuff by modifying
> texi2html
> and/or makeinfo. At present I'm not planning to do that, although
> maybe someone wants to talk me into it.
>
> Given that the result is useful and not too ugly, I think it is worth
> considering where to go from here. Here are some alternatives,
> each of which involves some form of pain & suffering.
> (1) Call current stuff from Makefile every time make is executed.
> (2) Generate Texinfo file or files from @category tags
> and commit in those so they don't have to generated from make.
> (3) Rewrite stuff in Perl and/or Lisp in hopes of making
> the category build process less obnoxious.
> (4) Just forget the whole thing.
>
> Comments?
>
> Robert
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