On 11/15/08, van Nek <van.nek at arcor.de> wrote:
> I am just coding a new definiton of a vector and some basic vector
> simplifications and functions.
Thanks for working on this topic. I think it is very important.
> At the moment I wonder what vector * vector and vector ^ -1should be.
If I am not mistaken, these are typically not defined in vector algebra.
Therefore they should not be defined in Maxima's vector operations either.
But these should not cause an error; Maxima should just let them be.
There is a lot of temptation to add convenience functions,
but at least for vectors, we should resist the temptation.
In the long run it will be more difficult to use Maxima vectors,
if they do not have the same algebraic properties as mathematical vectors.
By the way, I think that creating a new vector object is the
right way to proceed, instead of making them lists or matrices,
which have different properties.
Thanks for your help, & please keep up the good work.
Robert Dodier