Robert Dodier wrote:
> Christian,
>
> I have taken the liberty of forwarding your message
> to the Maxima mailing list. I don't use Ubuntu but I
> think there are other people on the list who do.
>
> Maybe you can tell us a little bit about your user
> interface project. If you have not already done so,
> perhaps you can take a look at
> http://maxima.sourceforge.net/relatedprojects.html
> and get some ideas from that.
>
> best,
>
> Robert Dodier
>
> --- Christian Jorgensen <christianjorgen at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
>> To: robert_dodier at users.sourceforge.net
>> From: "Christian Jorgensen" <christianjorgen at users.sourceforge.net>
>> CC: christianjorgen at users.sourceforge.net
>> Subject: Maxima versions for Ubuntu
>> Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 11:47:27 -0700
>>
>>
>> Message body follows:
>>
>> I am a student at the Dutch Open University and must as a
>> project (with two fellow students) propose improved user
>> interface for Maxima. Mr. Jos Simons has recently authored
>> a Maxima course for the Dutch Open University and has, he
>> sais, got goed advice from you. He recommends that we
>> contact you. I am presently working with the TeXmacs-
>> Maxima interface written by Mr. A. Grozyn. That requires
>> Linux and that I use Ubuntu (because they gave good support
>> to installing it.) When downloading Maxima Ubunto by
>> default gives version 5.9.2. I have in vain looked for a
>> version 5.14 or 5.15 suitable to run under Ubuntu. The
>> Linux versions at Sourceforge cannot. Grateful for any
>> advice you could offer. My e-mail is
>> christian.jorgensen at skynet.be. Thanks in advance for any
>> support you can offer.
>
>
>
>
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In fact to run recent versions of maxima under the texmacs which comes with
Ubuntu it is only necessary to edit two files coming with texmacs, in the
most trivial way, i.e. adding 5.14 or 5.15 to the list of supported
maximas. This is documented in the Ubuntu forums. If i remember well
one is tm_maxima in which you do:
5.10.*) --> 5.10.*|5.14.*|5.15.*)
Also you must replace #!/bin/sh in the beginning by #!/bin/bash because
Ubuntu doesn't use bash as standard shell and the script needs bash.
You must do the same in maxima_detect.
The real problem is that the interaction between maxima and texmacs doesn't
run properly after that in Ubuntu (**), for some maxima programs (works for
some others). If i remember well i have not encountered this problem with
texmacs and maxima running under FreeBSD (but i had also to edit the above
files).
I have found wxmaxima more convenient (or even maxima running under emacs)
except that printing doesn't work under either Ubuntu (*) or FreeBSD,for
whatever reason, and this is a very serious inconvenience. If maxima had
a way to export a whole session in latex, like maple or mathematica do, it
would solve this problem completely. Exporting formula by formula is very
inconvenient.
(*) some Googling shows that printing seems to work under Debian, and it
definitely works under Windows, but i never use it.
(**) this is a typescript of a small session under TeXmacs:
A maxima session:
Maxima 5.14.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net
Using Lisp CMU Common Lisp 19d (19D)
Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING.
Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter.
The function bug_report() provides bug reporting information.
(%i1) expand((x+y)^2);
Evaluation took 0.00 seconds (0.00 elapsed) using 1.086 KB.
Maxima encountered a Lisp error:
("+" 2 . "\\*") is not a proper list
Automatically continuing.
To reenable the Lisp debugger set *debugger-hook* to nil.
(%i2) 1+1;
Evaluation took 0.00 seconds (0.00 elapsed) using 64 bytes.
(%o2) 2
(%i3)
--
Michel Talon