From: Stavros M. <mac...@gm...> - 2023-01-18 20:33:56
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| There used to be (but I can't find it!) a program to abbreviate the display. ? pickapart Though it could certainly be improved in many ways. -s On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 1:40 PM Richard Fateman <fa...@gm...> wrote: > Apologies for taking space on this discussion list for something that has > already consumed too many messages. > > Large expressions (several pages long) are difficult to comprehend whether > in '2d" or linear form. Looking for the "/" to see where the denominator > begins, or searching for the matching ")" may be important and yet > difficult. What to do? > There used to be (but I can't find it!) a program to abbreviate the > display. > Thus we would see something like > E = sum of 140 terms > > (Which can be examined by E[1], ... E[140]...)) > > or E= product of... > or quotient... > etc. > An alternative to E[140] might be something like > ratcoef(E, x, 140) > etc. > This kind of abbreviation was used recursively, e.g. > > E = ( product of 50 terms) + (product of 40 terms) + .. > > Linear output (as used by grind, or display2d:false) uses far less memory > and computing, and so is faster and doesn't break things > so much. But really, other that to show we can do it, why display an > expression explicitly that is many pages long? > > I recall that in the past I proposed a program that produced a spreadsheet > instead of a conventional display. That is > coefficient | x exponent | y exponent | .... > 12345 3 4 ... > > which is perhaps of some use to people who are more familiar with > spreadsheets than (say) multi-dimensional arrays.. > > Looking for the program, I came across Bruce Miller's paper on formatting > expressions in Macsyma in various ways... > https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/IR/nistir5618.pdf > > Even lacking access to the source code it should not be too challenging to > (re-)implement these designs, should someone take on this project. > _______________________________________________ > Maxima-discuss mailing list > Max...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/maxima-discuss > |