Further work on $specint



Dieter Kaiser wrote:
> 
> Perhaps, it would be the best to combine the two test files at the end. But how
> many tests we should append to the testsuite is maybe a decision of the
> developpers and project admins of Maxima.

Thanks for working on the test suite.  Don't think it matters if we have 
multiple test files or combine them into one.  But I do want them to be 
run by default.

> 
> Because I am working continously on $SPECINT there a further changes due to the
> algorithm for the Unit Step function and the Abs function necessary. Furthermore
> I would like to add an algorithm to integrate a general summation.
> 
> One problem is that because of the more and more additional code to the main
> routines we are loosing the first concepts of the code. It might be necessary to
> restructure some parts of the main routines to reflect better the main parts of
> the algorithm and to have more elegant and readeable code.

As long as it's readable first, elegant second. :-)

I do have one question.  In quite a few functions you changed the 
parameter list to include exp and var.  Why was that?


> 
> In practice I work with a complete different file. In this file I have added a
> lot of debugging code, grouped the parts of the code which belong together,
> added a lot of comments and deleted a lot of "unnecessary" function calls.

If you want to reorder the file, that's ok with me.  But can do the 
changes separately?  That is, send a patch with JUST reordering.  Then 
additional patches on top of that.  This is just to make it easier for 
to figure out what is going on.

Also, the specint stuff is fairly complicated, so debugging code is 
good.  I think you can leave the debugging code in, but conditionalized 
out, if you want.

Thanks again for working on this,

Ray