source references



Robert Dodier wrote:
> On 3/5/09, Sheldon Newhouse <sen1 at math.msu.edu> wrote:
>   
>
>>  I think it would be very useful to have a source reference for maxima.
>> In the manual pages (or the output of '?') it would be nice to know what
>> source file actually contains the routine.
>>     
>
> I guess I'm opposed to that. Only a tiny fraction of users will ever look
> at the source code (aside from the problem of determining what to
> say about a function which has parts of its implementation in
> different files). Even for developers, I';m not convinced it's worth the effort.
>
>   
I agree.  It's too much work for too little gain.  If it's important,
use a lisp that records such information.

And I also noticed that you might get some information just by doing
:lisp (describe '$trigsimp) for example.  At least with cmucl, you can
guess from the output that trigsimp is actually defined in
share/trigonometry/trgsmp.mac.  (Well, once trigsimp has been autoloaded.)

Ray