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A Package Function Tutorial

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg92228] A Package Function Tutorial
  • From: blackhole at thebushman.net
  • Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:35:03 -0400 (EDT)

I have written a brief introduction to writing package functions that
implement most of the bells and whistles one would associate with a
professionally written function.  Some of the topics covered are
implementation of Automatic in functions, overloading of built-in
symbols, and others.

Yes, most of the material can be found scattered in the shipping
documentation, but my sense is that there is no good place to find
essentially a checklist of the features a good function should have,
like argument checking, attributes, syntax coloring, etc.  You will
find that I am no expert, but perhaps someone at Wolfram (or
elsewhere) will be offended enough to contribute some good
suggestions.

You can find it at my website, http://www.thebushman.net.

Here you will also find a package I published last month, a NURBS
package providing a bridge from parametric curves and surfaces to CAD-
friendly IGES format.


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