Le forum de XCAS

Oh, that's nice. I had the older version installed, which was very nice and came with a useful keyboard, but unfortunately the keyboard needed to be the default keyboard for all applications. The new version doesn't require the keyboard (although you can still install it) and has lost some functiona...

Another reason why a teacher might not use a CAS in a classroom is because some classes are prequisite for others, and who knows what hand computations later teachers might expect from the students. Of course, this problem can be avoided if you can get everybody on board with the same thing, but tha...

Leaving the 6/2 unsimplified shows a middle step in the complete the square formula x^2 + b^x = (x + (b/2))^2 - (b/2)^2 If having simplify set to none would do that, then (I would think) that going through all the steps would require switching between simplification modes. It might anyhow be easier ...

I'm using the latest debs on Ubuntu, and (after removing any local configuration), I removed any local configuration, and when I ran Xcas, the characters 1 and l (lowercase L) look very different. It appears to be using the font sans, whichever specific font that resolves to. I tried changing the fo...

Is there an option to turn off autosave? I often have stand-alone sessions, and each time I quit I need to click "No" on the "Save?" popup. (This is certainly not a big deal, I was just wondering.) Also, when the "Save?" popup appears if I tab to "No" and hit enter (instead of clicking on "No"), I s...

Perhaps I just didn't notice it before, but now I seem to see more references to Python compatibility.
Is this supposed to simply be an easy way for people to jump into XCas, or is the intent that the pseudo-Python be used extensively?

Jay

I may be doing something wrong, but I'm having trouble getting "try ... catch" to work correctly. Using an example from the manual, I entered try{A:=idn(2)*idn(3)} catch(erreur) {print("l'erreur est "+erreur)} and instead of "l’erreur est * Invalid dimension" I get :1: syntax error, unexpected T_SYM...

The (French) manual (in the section on printpow) indicates that given an expression like 2^3, the print command will print 2^3 formatted in one of three ways, but then return the value 8. In the current version of Xcas, the print command will print the evaluated expression, 8, and return the value 1...

Installing mupacs expects MuPAD to be installed, although I'm sure that could be gotten around. Still, it isn't immediate. I was going to mention the various interfaces for Xcas on my web page; perhaps (with his permission) I could mention Frederic Han's code for Emacs users.

Jay

Is anyone using mupacs to run Giac in Emacs? I gave it a shot without any luck. (Note that I just wanted to see how Giac runs with its various interfaces and won't be using mupacs beyond that. So I don't want anyone to go through any trouble to get it running, I'm just wondering if it's still usable...

Okay; I'll start by comparing the French and English manuals to see what is missing. Meanwhile, there is a patch to cascmd_en.tex (from giac-unstable) which translates some words which hadn't been translated yet and fixes some other minor typos. It is here , I tried attaching it, but the "Upload att...

I thought I'd check to see if my diff file made it to Dr. Parisse.

Also, when you said improve the English documentation, did you have anything specific in mind?

Jay

Well, then, I can work on the documentation.
The website has it available in html and pdf. I can work on some diffs to the html, unless there's a better way.

Jay

I read a lot on the computer, but it's nice to read something on paper too. Is there a place to buy a hard copy of the manual, preferably in a way which will support the developer? If not, I can always print out a copy or keep reading on my computer, but in that case is there another way to support ...