Re: [Maxima-discuss] Introduction to simplification and corresponding simplifier paper

[Gunter K. <gu...@pe...>]

Things are not this bad any more:
As a German user you will automatically be presented the German version of the manual - which isn't obvious as most of the HTML files never have been translated. ...and the English pages of the German manual are old enough to be seriously misleading at times.

... but AFAIK the English version of the manual should by now contain the parts that weren't subject of the discussion.

To everyone who wonders why I want maxima to use a2po for the translations: 
If we used it the untranslated sections would be accurate and the rest would tell new translators what is still accurate and what needs to be revised.

We only would need to find out if there is a way to select which files are handled with a2po and which are handled the traditional way. And, of course, if we can live with the additional build dependency.


Kind regards,

Gunter.

Am 21. Juni 2017 16:37:24 MESZ schrieb Roland Salz <sal...@gm...>:
>Hi,
>
> 
>
>last summer Richard Fateman and I wrote an introduction to
>simplification to be incorporated into the manual. It can be
>viewed at 
><https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/%7Efateman/papers/intro5.txt>
>https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/intro5.txt. The
>current manual contains no introduction at all to
>chapter 9, Simplification. Simplification, however, is a central part
>of the CAS Maxima system. Thus, its understanding
>gives valuable insight into the overall CAS system. The leading goal in
>writing this introduction was to make the reader
>curious and interested not only in what Maxima can do by itself, but in
>the numerous ways how it can be controlled,
>tailored, enhanced by the user as his tool.
>
> 
>
>The idea to write such an introduction came from reading the German
>Maxima version 5.29 (the last one that has been
>written), dating back to 2011 and translated at that time by Dieter
>Kaiser. This translation contains numerous chapter
>introductions that do not appear in the English original.
>
> 
>
>Richard had written a very thorough paper on Maxima's simplifier back
>in 1979. This paper in my opinion and to my
>knowledge is the best way to get an idea of how Maxima works at the
>programming level. Understanding simplification and
>the corresponding part of the Maxima system, the simplifier, can thus
>be regarded as a means to take a look into
>Maxima's way of operation in general. This paper was presented at a
>Maxima user's conference, it is theory directed to
>users. Our introduction to simplification makes reference to this
>paper, which can be viewed as a natural continuation
>of this introduction for the reader more interested in the subject.
>Although the information of this paper goes beyond
>what is normally contained in a User's Manual, my belief is that it
>should be incorporated in the official Maxima
>documentation corpus. 
>
> 
>
>From the discussion we had on the list about the proposed text last
>summer, I got the impression that there was a
>consensus to go ahead with this. In the meantime I made some
>experiences with building the documentation and I would
>feel confident to be able to do the texinfo formatting myself. But
>before starting I would like to be reassured that the
>project is agreed and the whole work will not be in vain.
>
> 
>
>My proposal therefore is to include the introduction itself at the
>beginning of Simplification.texi and to keep the
>paper as a separate file. For this I see two possibilities: (1) Include
>the file in texi format as part of the manual.
>(2) Include the file in the doc directory of the repository, in the
>tarball and in the installer version of Maxima, but
>leave it in plain text format to be read with any text editor. The
>latter way would not include it in the online help,
>the html or the pdf version of the manual itself, but it would make it
>accessible easily and offline to any Maxima user,
>in the same way a readme file is.
>
> 
>
>Best regards,
>
>Roland
>
> 

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