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# Maxima a computer algebra system in Emacs
Fermin MF
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Maxima is a great tool for symbolic mathematics, it has some support
for Emacs in the main repository, but is quite outdated and doesn't
receive the love I think it should, so a couple of months ago I decide
to improve and "modernize" the maxima-mode.el code base. So, I want
to talk about the integration with Emacs, the maxima REPL, how some of
the main tool for Emacs integrate in maxima-mode and in general show
how to start using maxima within Emacs.
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# Questions
## Q9 Is it is possible to include Maxima in org files similar to jupyter notebooks? (Does ob-maxima have support for the :results graphics header argument of org-src blocks?)
[Fermin] Right now its not possible to include images in the files,
but is a feature that I would love to implement in the future. About
the ob-maxima support I'm not so sure.
## Q8 Are you planning to upstream your package into Maxima? (would be nice :)
[Fermin] I would love to add the package to the maxima official
repository, but I don't know if I can use the GitLab CI/CD from the
main repository, if the answer is yes, then It shouldn't be too much
trouble.
## Q7 In which University do you start to use Maxima?
[Fermin] I started using maxima in the University of Zaragoza
(Spain) - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Zaragoza>.
## Q6. Is there support for images in maxima-mode?
[Fermin] Not yet (as of November 2020).
## Q5: Is Maxima's syntax a strict infix Lisp syntax or are there exceptions and special cases? Yes I mean Maxima itself.
[Fermin] I don't know enough about the maxima implementation to answer
the question, sorry.
## Q4. Is Maxima easy to get into in your opinion? (has its quirks though!, mailing list is usually helpful)
[Fermin] It is! I think that the learning curve is quite easy, and
that the manual and documentation are great!
## Q3: Do you plan to amend ob-maxima to support named session for Maxima code blocks in org mode (e.g. begin_src maxima :session **my-maxima**)? (the current implementation supports exactly onesession named **maxima**)
[Fermin] Yes, I want to improve in the future the maxima
implementation for org-mode.
## Q2: How does Maxima compare to SageMath in Emacs? does Maxima have more support because it is written in common Lisp whereas SageMath is written in Python?
[Fermin] I don't know about sagemath sorry, but I know that the lispy
thing about maxima make it interesting from a hacker stand point,
mostly because all the tools that Emacs have for editing Common Lisp.
## Q1: So I am an avid Octave user right now (had a MATLAB lesson in uni and so I knew the basics and it was easy to get into), what would you say are the advantages of Maxima over Octave as from my understanding they are pretty similar. I would be interested in trying it out but I am not sure if its worth it compared to Octave. (Octave is a MATLAB "clone", not meant for analytic calculations, more matrix multiplications etc.)
[Fermin] They can be use for similar purposes, but I don't know enough
about Octave to recommend maxima first, so I think the best thing to
do is to try and see what system fit more in your needs.
# Notes
<http://maxima.sourceforge.net/>
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