On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 11:14 AM, Oliver Kullmann
<O.Kullmann at swansea.ac.uk>wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 01:25:50PM +0100, ?iga Lenar?i? wrote:
> >
> > The user spends most of the time figuring out strange maxima's quirks
> > and inconsistencies, functions with strange names. Most potential
> > users don't want to deal with downloading maxima and it's gui
> > wxmaxima separately. The command line maxima makes the user feel like
> > it's some ancient DOS program and inherently inferior to Mathematica
> > or any other CAS.
>
> There are some fossils like me who feel that the command line is
> "infinitely
> superior" over gui's and the like, and, though fossils, but nevertheless
> users, the above statement (like the whole argument) needs to be rewritten,
> taking into account the various types of users.
>
> After all, one of the (several) reasons for me to use Maxima is that
> it is command-line based.
>
Hmmm... back when I used Mathematica exclusively, I used it's command line
interface from a terminal about as much as I used their GUI notebooks (SSH
into campus for a few quick calculations). It actually has (well had, 6
years ago) ascii art plotting facilities. Maybe we can get that in Maxima.