On 7/11/07, Joel B. Mohler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think the init file idea needs to be pushed harder.  I already do this and 
> the
> flexibility is absolutely critical to my happiness.  I even have my init file
> call another file in the current directory so I can have different things
> defined depending on which project I'm working on (Of course, that idea 
> doesn't
> have much merit from the notebook).
>
> We could publish init files for various CAS's.  I realize we can't match
> semantics, but for myself I don't think the semantics are the hard part -- the
> hard part is remembering the new function name.
>
> We could also publish init files for various branches of mathematics -- 
> applied,
> number theory, etc.
>
> I realize this could lead to support questions when people do dumb things in
> their init file, but I think it is easily worth to publish this huge amount of
> flexibility.

I think this is definitely worth a try, and will probably be pretty fun to do.
It may or may not be successful (e.g., if you type foo? the examples could
easily fail because of how you customized your session -- this could be
very bad).  It would make sense to do something like this at least
for the following systems, in order of priority:
   1. mathematica
   2. matlab
   3. maple
   4. magma
   5. pari
   6. gap

For some of these, it is hard to think of where to begin, since there are
thousands of commands (e.g., matlab has over 8000 commands).
One could begin by creating a "mathematica.sage" that defines common
commands like
   Integrate
   Sin
   Cos
   Derivative (?)
   N

etc., with the case conventions of mathematica.  This file could look
like:

   Integrate = integrate
   Sin = sin
   Cos = cos
   ...
   N = RDF    # or something more sophisticated?? I.e., take number of
digits as input...
   ...

Thoughts?   Volunteers?

William

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