I have an interest in being able to do useful symbolic and numeric
calculations with logarithms in base 10. I know there is a contrib module
called log10. It works fine for doing numeric calculations, but doesn't
behave how I'd like for generic symbolic manipulation.
For example the natural log can solve for x:
(%i1) solve(y=log(x),x);
(%o1) [x=%e^y]
But log10 gives this:
(%i2) solve(y=log10(x),x);
(%o2) [log10(x)=y] /* I'd prefer to get x=10^y */
There are many of other examples of symbolic manipulation of log10 where log
shows up in the answer. I'd really like to leave log out of it altogether.
It would be really handy if I could teach Maxima the various properties of
logarithms and inverse logarithms. My interest is base 10, but it seems that
it would be fairly generic for other integer bases.
I don't even know where to start, but suggestions are welcome.
Thanks in advance,
Bill Eaton