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maxima

Can I change the way Maxima/wxMaxima displays the transpose operator?

Can I change the way Maxima displays the transpose operator? The (default) of just printing "transpose" uses very much space and makes the formulae harder to read.

When I enter:

transpose(M)

I would like it to print something like
MT.

I use Maxima through wxMaxima.

PS. There is no tag for wxMaxima on SO.

Solution

  • This is a great question. Unfortunately there isn't a way to handle it within Maxima itself, but if it's OK to do a little Lisp programming, we can solve it.

    (%i1) :lisp (defun dimension-transpose (expr stuff) (dimension-superscript `((mexpt) ,(cadr expr) |$t|) stuff))
DIMENSION-TRANSPOSE
(%i1) :lisp (setf (get '%transpose 'dimension) 'dimension-transpose)
DIMENSION-TRANSPOSE
(%i1) transpose(A.B);
                                     T    T
(%o1)                               B  . A

    Essentially we just define a display function which constructs an MEXPT (i.e. "^") expression and displays that, and then tell Maxima to use the new function to display transpose expressions.

    Be careful to copy the punctuation exactly as it is shown. Be careful to distinguish backtick from single quote.

    EDIT: The above works for command-line Maxima. For wxMaxima probably there is some similar procedure, but I don't know it.