On 10/5/07, Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> Powerdisp is intended for the display of power series. If it works for
> anything else, it would be mildly surprising. In fact, if it works for a
> particular problem involving power series not in canonical truncated taylor
> series form, that is, itself, mildly surprising.
> (I think I incorporated this feature into Macsyma circa 1970.)
Well, I guess this is a case of bit rot and/or requirement creep.
powerdisp is referenced in FORM-MPLUS (src/nforma.lisp)
and in $DISPTERMS and $DISPFORM (src/comm.lisp) and
nowhere else so far as I can tell; it doesn't appear to have
anything to do with power series in particular, but is associated
with MPLUS in general.
Maybe powerdisp could be renamed to something which more
accurately describes its effect at present. I can't think of anything.
FWIW
Robert