suggestions for maxima development



On Fri, 2007-12-07 at 13:37 +0800, The Directory wrote:
> I'm using Maxima for Windows, and the graphics for the 3D graphing function is a bit scratchy and slow to
> repaint.
I'm curious to know your opinion of openmath. If you have not tried it,
please repeat your plot3d command adding the option
[plot_format,openmath] and let us know your comments.

> You might want to try GraphCalc 4.0's 3D rendering engine for
> improvement
thanks for the tip. It looks very nice indeed; unfortunately, I have not found an Ubuntu
package for it; I'll keep trying.

> the XMaxima and wxMaxima GUI frontends need to be improved for simplicity
> to the beginning user.
You're absolutely right. Can you help us? Our main limitation is lack of workforce.

> How do you enter in e and pi and find their numerical values? I can't seem
> to do it. There should be a simpler way of extracting a constant's
> numerical value out to the screen. Maybe if you type something like M.pi
> or M.e, then the values will show up

try float(%e) and float(%pi). If you want more precision, then use
something such as:
(fpprec:300, bfloat(%e));

You are used to seeing their numerical value immediately in other
programs, because those other programs work always in a numerical way
and not in an algebraic way as Maxima, where %e and %pi are treated as
irrational numbers and there floating-point representations are mere
approximations which introduce errors.

Regards,
Jaime Villate