Thanks Stavros and others who responded,
It seemed to be an interesting solution which would solve the problem.
I tested
z: 2+3*%i
before and
z: 2+3*%j
after applying the solution and then converted to polar form using
z1: polarform(z)
Unfortunately z1 differ before and after applying the suggested solution and z1 is presented with a mix of? %i and %j and the result is less simplified with the solution applied.
The reason I want to use j is that it is common practice among engineers, at least in electrical engineering, to use j instead of i as imaginary unit and it would be a good idea to keep that practice in all steps of the engineering processes instead of sometimes using i and sometimes using j. (BTW it seems that both Mathematica and Maple provide a built in solution to this.)
/Per
________________________________
Fr?n: Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu>
Till: Per Liss <maillistor-cas at yahoo.se>
Kopia: Inl?gg Maximalista <maxima at math.utexas.edu>
Skickat: l?rdag, 18 februari 2012 23:33
?mne: Re: [Maxima] The letter j as imaginary unit
Maxima does not confuse i (for, e.g., current) with %i (the imaginary unit), so I'm not sure what the issue is here. ?And if you insist on "j", why would you want to use "%j"? But...
If you really want to use j as the imaginary unit, that is easy enough to do by fiddling with some internal stuff:
? ? ?block([simp:false],
? ? ? ? ? ??putprop(%i,?j,'?texword),
? ? ? ? ? ??aliaslist: ?list(?cons(%i,j)),
? ? ? ? ? ?alias(j,%i))
After you execute that, you can use "j" on input as the imaginary unit, and Maxima will print "j" on output for the imaginary unit. ?It will also accept the input "%i" for the imaginary unit, but presumably that shouldn't be a problem.
I am not sure why all this is useful, but there you are....
? ? ? ? ? ? ? -s
2012/2/18 Per Liss <maillistor-cas at yahoo.se>
Hello,
>
>I'm am completely new to Maxima and computer algebra systems and am trying to learn how to make best use of it.
>
>After reading and introductory textbook, I have been now spent some time finding information on the Internet on how to make Maxima using the letter "j" as the imaginary unit in order not to make confusion with the symbol "i" for current. I would like Maxima not only to understand input using "%j" which I believe could be done by defining a constant, but also produce outputs using "j" instead of "i". My final goal is to find a way to permanently configure my installation to use the letter j.
>
>I would appreciate any tips where to find such info. I have searched the archive for this list and done a general Google search but didn't find any info.
>
>My installation is:
>Ubuntu Linux on an IBM T42p laptop running wxMaxima 0.8.4 (don't know hot to extract the Maxima core version)
>
>
>Best Regards,
>Per Liss
>
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