On 12/8/08, Dieter Kaiser <drdieterkaiser at web.de> wrote:
> In a lot of places in the code I do not see what would be the right
> simplification, we have mul, mul*, simplify, simplifya with the flag T
> or NIL. Expressions with a simp-flag in it and more variations.
> Furthermore we have a lot of macros or functions (perhaps hundreds) like
> m+, gm, mlog, bess, sin%, ... which are only shortcuts, but do all
> different simplifications too.
>
> Perhaps a first step to get correct simplifications would be to have a
> more simple style to program the simplification. Maybe one rule could be
> that the simplification has to be done by the simplifier and not by hand
> within the code.
If you or anyone wants to clean up the mess of little functions
which all do the same thing (except not quite),
then please go right ahead. Try to verify that any functions which
are removed are not called anywhere in Maxima; aside from
src there could be fossil code in share.
best
Robert Dodier