MaplePrimes - answers and comments on Question, Why does Maple keep changing commands?

Syntax

Tim Vrablik — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:39:00 Z

Although some commands have changed over time, they have not changed much in at least the last 4 releases. For example:

- if you type in ?plot2d, you'll get the help page to plot a 2D function.

- if you type in ?diff, the first entry you should see is the help page for diff. The syntax for doing higher order derivatices is just diff(f(x), x$n) where n is the derivative you'd like to take.

- Simplify still does exist. In fact, there are several different types of simplifications.

- Coefficient extraction still does exist. Now for coefficient, this one didn't come up right away. However, if you type in ?coeff, you'll get the function you're looking for.

All of these were found under standard Maple 13 help pages. Now unfortunately I do not know the history of all of these commands, so I'm not sure if/when the changes took place (although I'm pretty sure these particular ones have not changed). I do know that as the software evolves, command names have to change because of data structures/procedures/etc. We do try to make the software as backwards compatible as possible, but we can't get it to be compatible 100% of the time.

Hope this helps.

Memory

Robert Israel — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:58:00 Z

I think your memory is faulty. I don't think there was ever a Maple command plot2D.
The command for finding a coefficient of a polynomial is and was coeff, not Coefficient. Diff is and was the inert version of diff, and the syntax of these have not changed in many years, certainly not since I first got acquainted with Maple V Release 2, at least 16 years ago.

The help command

resolvent — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:41:43 Z

I did not know that ?command_name brings up the help menu for that command.

Problem is - one would already have to know the name of command_name in order to call up its help menu.

clickable

acer — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:21:57 Z

I considered that he was thinking of context-sensitive menus, where unfortunately the capitalization does not match that of the actual commands, and where the appearance of individual choices comes and goes depending on the "selection".

I've see it happen before, that somene thinks that clickable Maple is the primary form of using Maple. (...although, maybe that's not what's happened here. Package exports are another possibility.)

acer