If Maxima is running on an underlying Common Lisp which already supports the UTF character sets, then it should be possible for Maxima to support Greek characters "without any additional work" (or, at least without any additional code).
I.e., if Maxima is careful about how it deals with the underlying Common Lisp characters, then extended characters such as alpha, beta, etc., will be considered alphabetic and will just work "out of the box" without any additional programming.
But achieving this will require someone to go through the entire Maxima code base with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that some code isn't unintentionally subverting the use of extended characters.
At 11:38 AM 2/8/2013, Richard Fateman wrote:
>On 2/8/2013 9:06 AM, Pepe Sanchez wrote:
>>....
>
>>Now, let us suppose I need using some Thermodynamical expression requiring the use of, lets say, "DeltaG", such as it appears in chemistry textbooks,
>
>I think it is a small accomodation to ask your students to type DeltaG
>or maybe dG.
>
>If this is the only problem you find with using computer algebra to express and
>manipulate thermodynamics formulas for class, then you are doing well indeed.