Hello,
we are on the way to implement a Maxima plugin for the Mathcad-like free,
but closed source math program SMath Studio.
http://en.smath.info/forum/yaf_postst2078_Maxima-Plugin.aspxhttp://en.smath.info/forum/yaf_postst2086_Maxima.aspx
The interface is in early alpha state and we are just beginners in Maxima.
We hope to reach some day a level of maturity, justifying our interface tob
e listed as software using maxima on the maxima homepage.
We encountered a problem with expressions containing exponents which start
with unary minus, just like
e^-c/b
in Maxima, this is equivalent to (e^(-c))/b, in SMath Studio, this is
understood as e^(-c/b), i.e. something entirely different. There are similar
cases like
e^-cos(x)/b or e^-(x+y)/b ,
see the problem example in
http://en.smath.info/forum/yaf_postsm11340_Maxima-Plugin.aspx#post11340
The root of the problems is the unusual low priority level of unary minus in
SMath Studio.
So far Maxima output scanning is not very sophisticated, just some
replacements are made. We may have overseen an option to avoid the problem
by proper output formatting. The ideal string would be
e^{-c}/b
(curly braces not being displayed in formatted SMath output)
Is there a way to ask Maxima to include a bracket level in the output? An
option would be to use tex output, where we have these brackets but that
would require us to write a tex input parser for SMath...
Any hints welcome.
Best regards, Martin Kraska