On 12/3/07, John Ogilvie <ogilvie at cecm.sfu.ca> wrote:
> 1) Does there exist a geometry package for Maxima that might illustrate
> properties of plane triangles, and platonic solids, for instance?
I don't believe so.
> 2) On the internet page 'maxima.sourceforge.net/releaseplans' there
> is some description that "development releases will have odd minor
> version numbers". Is that policy still in practice? The present
> release, soon to be in turn superseded, seems considerably beyond the
> point "we are here" in that diagram. It would be helpful to interested
> parties for this page to be maintained as current as other aspects of
> Maxima.
Since that page, http://maxima.sourceforge.net/releaseplans.shtml
was created, development has proceeded roughly along those lines,
although the numbering scheme was never implemented.
By far the biggest item mentioned there is to "Fix, or at least address,
all bugs listed in Sourceforge system". There are a lot (hundreds) of
known bugs. We are making steady progress, but I suspect that we
will only be able to resolve many of the bugs by replacement of some
pretty large sections of the Maxima code (limits, definite integrals,
Taylor series come to mind). Naturally I would be happy to be
proven wrong about that.
At present the current development can be summarized as follows.
(1) Bug fixes in the core source code. (2) Additional share packages.
(3) Revision and translation of the reference manual.
(4) Regular (3 times a year) releases.
We did not ever specifcally debate or approve this, this is just a
description of how it has turned out. Speaking for myself, I am happy
about this direction and see no need for different or more specific plans.
Probably the "release plans" page should be simply removed, since
it is out-of-date, and we do not have any definite plan to replace it.
best
Robert Dodier