@vv Thank you. When I said "I have questions about" Maple there, I meant, I'm not good enough at math to confidently evaluate Maple's response there.

@acer I'll try your advice. I was benefiting from the 2-d appearance, but editing it is slowing me down to a standstill.

@Preben Alsholm I'll try. Thank you.

@Carl Love, thanks much.

I found another solution I like:

use a=3 in plot(x, x=0..a) end use;

@acer 

Thanks for the good examples, acer. This will greatly facilitate my learning about the parts of Maple's graphics subsystem that I'd like to use in the near future.

"The idea is that you can write a convenient procedure to generate such plots in a reusable manner."

I plan to do exactly that, using Maple's proc() (not using eval() or subs() like in the other recent thread). This is a situation where I do want to define a new global procedure (rather than passing around unnamed expressions as in the other thread).

@acer 

"By the way, I submitted a request this past year for an enhancment to seq. Instead of supplying the float increment as an option I asked to be able to supply the number of values."

Numpy offers both options: arange() and linspace().

@acer Thanks for explaining.

Each full evaluation will strip off a set of uneval quotes.

That describes LISP too. Some people view it as a feature. An inert form would take an extra step to evaluate, and that extra step would be a problem for me, since it's unnecessary as long as I correctly manage the quotes.

@acer Sorry, I'd misread your first example. It is good for my purposes, now that I read it right.

"It can be a somewhat fragile mechanism."

How is it more fragile than passing expressions around as objects in LISP or Mathematica? (Learning how to control evaluation was easy for me in LISP but laborious for me in Mathematica.) It is what I'm used to doing, in those languages. I can't tell you why it's best, but I'll need more motivation before I abandon it. It's the way I think, for better or worse.

@acer 

Why are you trying to pass the plot function call around as if it were an object!?

Why not? If you can talk me out of it, please do, but it seemed like a good idea to me, and nm 3856's 3rd answer is easier to read than yours.

@nm My question was vague, but your third answer is what I was contemplating. I hadn't known about single quotes until now. In my situation, I want to avoid adding global definitions, which is why I don't do either of your first two solutions. Thanks much.

Thank you both for the good examples.

@Thomas Richard 

Thank you.

@Kitonum 

Thanks much. I had tried assuming 0 < x, but on second thought, my assumption wasn't the right one.

I suppose it would be too much to ask Maple to answer my original question, with the Maple's answer in the form of a conditional including the limits of convergence?

@acer 

I have to get back to work on my CAS. I don't care to learn any more about Maple's quirk's. I'l like to return the product for a refund.