On Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:40:44 -0700 (PDT) rjf <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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 think it would be a huge overstatement to say that the symbolics subsystem in Sage was "designed" in any way. IMHO, it was mostly patched together to support educational use, then acquired more cruft through several rewrite attempts and cramped schedules. I am definitely not an expert in this field and have no idea how the assumptions should work. If you can provide some references, perhaps these could be used as starting points when/if somebody decides to work on this. Here is the only reference I found on this topic: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=680466 The article is available for download here (for those with access): http://www.springerlink.com/content/p77364025wh6j7h5/ Burcin -- 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
