Sorry if this is the wrong list for this, but I have come to beg the Linux Mandrake community to create and bundle with the next version of Linux Mandrake rpms for a mathematical program called Maxima. This program has two major requirements - gcl and the maxima program itself - which are not available except as an exceptionally old binary and source, and also a graphical front end to some of the functionality called Symaxx. The front end is at http://rz-home.de/~cnentwig/symaxx.html, and Maxima and gcl are at http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/maxima.html. The reason I feel this software is worth including is that it represents the only GPL software which can handle major symbolic calculations. Octave is excellent for numerical stuff, but when it comes to Mathematica style symbolic calculations Maxima seems to be THE free program right now. I have seen a number of people inquiring about rpms for this software, because the compile is a bit difficult, but apparently there are none. I believe it would be a good complement to Octave in the Mandrake distribution. I am not technically qualified to do this myself :-( so I thought I would put it up to the mandrake people and see if anyone thought it was worthwhile to get it to compile under Mandrake and make an RPM. Has anyone considered this? Again, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. Best, C Y _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.
