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Re: What should Mma be?

• To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
• Subject: Re: What should Mma be?
• From: bleier at menu.visus.com (Alan Bleier)
• Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 10:23:57 EST

Warren Wiscombe wrote:

"I would prefer to see Mma remain a prototyping environment.  I don't care
if my plot labels look crummy, or if they can't be done in a special font
(although Greek would be nice to have, throughout Mma and not just for plot
decoration), or if I can't submit my Mma notebook immediately for
publication.  Mma-to-TeX translators are nice, but I would much prefer to
see Mma resources poured into more and better packages that do real
mathematics, like asymptotics (a notable lacuna) or better recognition of
ODE forms that are reducible to known forms.  To me, Mma is a place to do
mathematics..."

I wholeheartedly agree.  The graphics are OK.  Real math packages are the  
most important thing to keep adding.  Greek characters would save a lot of  
ugly typing out of alpha's and betas (and even MathCAD can do this :-).  


We use Mathematica for prototyping and C or even spreadsheets for  
production, once we've used Mathematica to understand how to solve a  
problem.  Using different tools for different parts of computing makes a lot  
of sense to me if they each do their part of the job well.

Alan
--
Alan Bleier				Member of the Technical Staff
Cognos*centi Corporation		Phone 412-488-3909
2100 Wharton Street, Suite 701		FAX   412-488-7599
Pittsburgh, PA 15203  USA		bleier at cognos-centi.com