simple question with Maple, why does it not give antilog:

This is maple().

Thank you,

Now to try something more complex!

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Can I ask differences between using Maxima Engine or Maple engine?

Wrote

Can I ask differences between using Maxima Engine or Maple engine?

Hi. My opinion: Maxima is free, but not free for distribution, or something like that. So, you must install Maxima from author's site, and tell to the SMath plugin where is Maxima.bat. This introduce some issues; think for example in workstations or places with restrictions to access to the hard disk.

Maple was the symbolic engine for Mathcad 11 (the last mathcad version without a lot of restrictions and very stable). So, it's important having it if you're translating mathcad worksheets to SMath. Also, Maple 6 it's enough powerful for the typical engineering calculations. And finally Maple plugin don't need any extra setup steeps. But, even Maple 6 it's enough old for say that have not licencing restrictions, maybe you can found some legal restrictions about it's usage.

Best regards.
Alvaro.

Wrote

Can I ask differences between using Maxima Engine or Maple engine?

Maxima is free but if bundled with other software it requires that software to be open source, which SMath Studio is not. Yet, in past versions I have distributed an adapted version of Maxima, in order to have a portable distribution.

I dropped this because auf several reasons:
- it was not really safe in terms of the license,
- the bundled maxima version could not be run standalone (because of adjustments to the startup script)
- the maxima distribution is quite large.
- relying on a standard distribution reduces the maintenance work for the plugin.

The setup of maxima for SMath Studio could be streamlined. It should be no problem to search for maxima on a computer and install it if it is missing. Yet, I never configured such installation routines. The Maxima plugin has a considerable bug list, therefore some day I will take the effort and give it a face lift, perhaps including automatic configuration. But currently I observe some regressions in SMath Studio itself (many things that used to work don't work any more or work differently). The bad thing is that I don't know if that are bugs or features and how one can rely on this in the future. Without comprehensive specification, how evaluation (symbolic, numeric, within expressions, functions, procedures) are expected to work, I don't feel like implementing or debugging advanced stuff. My current contribution is limited to updates of the Handbuch and the Getting started example.

Currently my time budget goes into using Maxima for automatic assessment of individually parametrized homework assignments in the context of the Moodle learning management system (the so called STACK quiz type).

The legal status of the maple executable used in the maple plugin has never been clarified here in the forum. No statement by maple has been reported that the executable is declared public domain. I don't know of any age limit for software licenses.
You might not care about this in private use. Yet in public service like university teaching you are expected to operate legally correct.

This is why I don't bundle the maple plugin in the portable preconfigured distribution.

Wrote

Maple was the symbolic engine for Mathcad 11

Remember Alvaro, a collab "Martin" cracked the entire Maple.
He got spanked by Mona !!! and didn't last long.
I got it before Mona.
Cheers ... Jean