First, rest assured that we don't really expect users to figure out how to use the internal typesetting representation and generate those ugly strings with msubs and all. You shouldn't have to do this.

Certainly, there should be a command/package to convert from TeX into this internal typesetting representation.

Note that you may also be better off using Vectors rather than lists, as Vector arithmetic is more predictable than list arithmetic.

Where is there a comparison of Vector arithmetic and list arithmetic?

Basically, this is where the fact that Maplesoft is a commercial enterprise comes in. There is little ROI to systematic maintenance.

In a wilder speculation tone, if Maple turned into an open source project, would there be enough manpower within the Maple community for such a systematic maintainance?

Yes, missing interlinks is a problematic consequence of the development model of Maple: rather isolated individuals or groups , producing pieces of software with overlapping functionality along the time, or even simultaneously. Eg. I have submitted elsewhere a similar list of missing interlinks for help pages on vectors and tensors, but I have little hope of much improvement in this field.

Though this may be going off-thread, let me observe also the additional problem that the system of help pages is quite uneven regarding consistency in the use of terms. Eg. the term function, that has a precise mathematical meaning, is used, depending on the help page, with different computational meanings, either as a synonym of procedure or as a short for a function call. Though I guess that many persons have been writing help pages along these 27 years, I hope yet that it is not too late to reach consistency within these help pages.

Though this may be going off-thread, let me observe also the additional problem that the system of help pages is quite uneven regarding consistency in the use of terms. Eg. the term function, that has a precise mathematical meaning, is used, depending on the help page, with different computational meanings, either as a synonym of procedure or as a short for a function call. Though I guess that many persons have been writing help pages along these 27 years, I hope yet that it is not too late to reach consistency within these help pages.

So, Maple ebooks in two different formats. How do they compare?

Is this .mbook "zip" file the same as the .mwz files mentioned in this blog?

So, this thing is a Maple-Book-Reader. It is not a Maple-Book-Writer, and a Maple-Worksheet-Reader (call it the way you like) is still missing. Alejandro

I cannot see yet whether MapleReader is a proper name because Nina has not explained what this eBook file format called an 'mbook' is and how it is processed by MapleReader. Is it read&execute only? (as a worksheet that you cannot change), or that you can change but do not save changes? Which is its relation to the .mw file format? Is it also xml? Which application makes the translation? That is, will MapleReader take .mw worksheets as input? What I see is that MapleReader loads at start the same libraries as Standard GUI (ie reader -L and maplew -L produce the same output files). So, my guess is that .mbook format will not be too different from .mw format.

Not clear either what his .mbook format file is. But I have found that a bare text input file with content like: 1+1; int(x,x); plot(sin(x),x=0..Pi); is executed by the command line: reader -i file producing the output: 2 1/2*x^2 and a plot in a quite wide plot window whose menu has much more options than the plot window menu produced in Standard GUI (I have set the option "plot display" to window). This is under Windows XP. Note also that the command line: reader -f apparently may read a licence file from a selected location. Regards, Alejandro

On Windows XP I can run all versions from Maple V Release 4 on without problem.

I find both versions of the documentation complementary and I like to have both. A version printed on paper is more comfortable for reading (and probably more healthier), more convenient to take anywhere, compare different pages or with other printed material and use as a reference. An electronic version is more convenient for searching a specific content or further processing (as pasting some material in a worksheet). With a CD-only version I should go to print them, but that is too inconvenient for me.

What I observe is that drag & drop from eg Total Comander into Standard GUI opens a second tab when a second worksheet is droped (under Win XP). So, I think, if one knows a bit of the interprocess comunication, it should be possible to open new tabs programmatically. I do not get the same effect under Debian Sarge. By drag & drop from Krusader into Standard GUI I get instead the locator of the worksheet in the prompt. May be design, or because its Gnome or KDE versions are a bit old? I do not know.

I use TotalCommander in Windows and Krusader in Linux. In both two-window file managers you can add buttons to the button bar to launch any application on the file marked, anywhere it is located in the file system, including mounted dos partitions from linux. In fact, I have for TotalCommander a dedicated subbar for every version of Maple that I have installed, so that I can launch many old worksheets with the version of Maple that created it. And both file managers include among many features, a history of directories for each window.