On Tue, 2011-01-18 at 12:29 -0800, Joerg Rauh wrote:
> With this experience I'd like to suggest including the search terms
> (i.e. slope field, nabla) in the manual and index and referring to
> where they are discussed - rather than not having them there at all.
> Not finding the search terms might give the impression that the
> package is unable to do the desired tasks - which isn't true. And 66
> Plotdf could possibly become part of 22 Differential Equations? And 59
> linearalgebra could possibly become part of 25 Matrices and Linear
> Algebra?
Hello Joerg,
welcome to the Maxima list. Your comments are very welcome. The ideas
brought by someone who has worked with other packages in the past are
always very important to help us improve Maxima.
I will add the term "slope field" as a synonym for "direction field" as
you suggest. The manual needs some major restructuring because it used
to document only the core part of Maxima and the additional packages
were added later on at the end; it really makes more sense to blend in
the additional packages in the relevant sections rather than keeping
them separate at the end.
In any case, the manual you are referring to is a reference manual,
intended to be used by a user with some previous knowledge of Maxima. A
beginner should better use a user's manual or a tutorial. Those can be
found in the tutorial section in
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/documentation.html
Also, according to the chapter numbers you mention, it seems to me that
you are looking at a very old version of the manual. Which version are
you using?
Regards,
Jaime