Many features in Maxima do not use the "assume" features at all. If Macsyma were to be redesigned from the ground up, the issues related to assume etc would probably be addressed at a foundational level.
To the extent that other computer algebra systems claim to be a fresh look at issues, it appears that they have all failed to address this one. Instead they ignore "assumptions" and later patch them on in peculiar ways and provide access to this information only from some specific programs, e.g Mathematica's Integrate, Reduce, Simplify. But probably not much else. So this known problem (at least since 1974) was off the radar of the brainiacs who designed all those subsequent systems, including I suppose, Sage. I don't know if "desolve" uses any assumptions, but I would not be surprised if it didn't, at all. except perhaps (and this too is hardly guaranteed) through definite integration. But Macsyma's defint and limit programs were written before the assumption system, I think, and may not make full use of such things. And then of course the assumption system is not as smart as it could possibly be, nor is it as expensive as a smarter system would be. RJF -- To post to this group, send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
