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Maxima a computer algebra system in Emacs
Fermin MF
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Maxima is a great tool for symbolic mathematics, it has some support for Emacs in the main repository, but is quite outdated and doesn't receive the love I think it should, so a couple of months ago I decide to improve and "modernize" the maxima-mode.el code base. So, I want to talk about the integration with Emacs, the maxima REPL, how some of the main tool for Emacs integrate in maxima-mode and in general show how to start using maxima within Emacs.
Questions
Q9 Is it is possible to include Maxima in org files similar to jupyter notebooks? (Does ob-maxima have support for the :results graphics header argument of org-src blocks?)
[Fermin] Right now its not possible to include images in the files, but is a feature that I would love to implement in the future. About the ob-maxima support I'm not so sure.
Q8 Are you planning to upstream your package into Maxima? (would be nice 
[Fermin] I would love to add the package to the maxima official repository, but I don't know if I can use the GitLab CI/CD from the main repository, if the answer is yes, then It shouldn't be too much trouble.
Q7 In which University do you start to use Maxima?
[Fermin] I started using maxima in the University of Zaragoza (Spain) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Zaragoza.
Q6. Is there support for images in maxima-mode?
[Fermin] Not yet (as of November 2020).
Q5: Is Maxima's syntax a strict infix Lisp syntax or are there exceptions and special cases? Yes I mean Maxima itself.
[Fermin] I don't know enough about the maxima implementation to answer the question, sorry.
Q4. Is Maxima easy to get into in your opinion? (has its quirks though!, mailing list is usually helpful)
[Fermin] It is! I think that the learning curve is quite easy, and that the manual and documentation are great!
Q3: Do you plan to amend ob-maxima to support named session for Maxima code blocks in org mode (e.g. begin_src maxima :session my-maxima)? (the current implementation supports exactly onesession named maxima)
[Fermin] Yes, I want to improve in the future the maxima implementation for org-mode.
Q2: How does Maxima compare to SageMath in Emacs? does Maxima have more support because it is written in common Lisp whereas SageMath is written in Python?
[Fermin] I don't know about sagemath sorry, but I know that the lispy thing about maxima make it interesting from a hacker stand point, mostly because all the tools that Emacs have for editing Common Lisp.
Q1: So I am an avid Octave user right now (had a MATLAB lesson in uni and so I knew the basics and it was easy to get into), what would you say are the advantages of Maxima over Octave as from my understanding they are pretty similar. I would be interested in trying it out but I am not sure if its worth it compared to Octave. (Octave is a MATLAB "clone", not meant for analytic calculations, more matrix multiplications etc.)
[Fermin] They can be use for similar purposes, but I don't know enough about Octave to recommend maxima first, so I think the best thing to do is to try and see what system fit more in your needs.
Notes
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/
Sunday, Nov 29 2020, ~ 3:44 PM - 4:04 PM EST
Sunday, Nov 29 2020, ~12:44 PM - 1:04 PM PST
Sunday, Nov 29 2020, ~ 8:44 PM - 9:04 PM UTC
Sunday, Nov 29 2020, ~ 9:44 PM - 10:04 PM CET
Monday, Nov 30 2020, ~ 4:44 AM - 5:04 AM +08
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