After playing around with this some more, I discovered that this only happens for something where the expression which is being differentiated is simply the variable of differentiation. While I would still argue that, for consistency, 'diff(x,x) should act in a similar way to 'integrate(x,x) and just return the noun form which can be translated into tex, it's no longer urgent for me because I can write work-around code for this single case.
Sorry,
-Nathan
-----Original Message-----
From: Nathaniel E. Powell
Sent: Thu 10/16/2008 7:29 PM
To: Nathaniel E. Powell; maxima at math.utexas.edu
Subject: RE: Problem with 'diff(x,x) tex conversion
Would anyone like to tell me how much I would need to pay them to get #1 fixed below and to send me a custom built windows installer (with the fix) and the patch file, and to file the patch so that hopefully it gets into the next release of Maxima?
Thanks!
-Nathan
-----Original Message-----
From: Nathaniel E. Powell
Sent: Wed 10/15/2008 7:19 PM
To: maxima at math.utexas.edu
Subject: Problem with 'diff(x,x) tex conversion
To the Maxima Mailing list:
I'm trying to make it so that I can typeset (convert into tex) 'diff(x,x). There seems to be a couple of problems with this conversion process.
1. The apostrophe doesn't prevent the diff function from being evaluated. This is strange, because the apostrophe on 'integrate(x,x) prevents the integrate function from being evaluated, so why would it be different for diff?
2. Since 'diff(x,x) outputs 1 instead of the unevaluated function, I've tried turning off simplification ("simp:false;"), and this returns something which is almost right, although it has the d with a "+1" exponent. However, the tex output doesn't seem right at all: "$${{d^{{\it mplus}\left(\right)}}\over{{\it mtimes}\left(\right)}}\,x$$"
What should I do about this?
Thanks,
-Nathan