Some of you know me from my occasional posts on Maple’s typesetting and plotting features, but today, I am here in my new role as co-chair (along with Rob Corless of Western University) of the 2021 Maple Conference. I am pleased to announce that we have just opened the Call for Presentations.

This year’s conference will be held Nov. 2 – Nov. 5, 2021. It will be a free virtual event again this year, making it an excellent opportunity to share your Maple-related work with others without the expenses and inconveniences of travel.

Maple Conference 2021 invites submissions of proposals for presentations on a range of topics related to Maple, including Maple in education, algorithms and software, and applications. All presenters will be given the option of submitting a full paper, which will undergo peer review, and if accepted, be included in the conference proceedings.

Presentation proposals are due June 1, 2021.

You can find more information about the themes of the conference, how to submit a presentation proposal, and the program committee on Maplesoft Conference Call for Presentations.

Registration for attending the conference will open in June. Another announcement will be made at that time.

I sincerely hope that all of you here in the Maple Primes community will consider joining us for this event, whether as a presenter or attendee.

Equation labels are great!

I use them extensively to produce textbook style documentation that is understandable for non-Maple users. Even if Maple input is not hidden, documents look much cleaner since auxiliary names and the assignment statement “:=” do not have to be used most of the time.

Suggestions to improve Maple 2021 equation label functionality (in order of preference):

• In a text passage or Maple input: Double click on a label reference to open the insert label dialogue (crtl-L) in order to change the reference (instead of deleting the reference and inserting a new reference).
• Right click on an equation label to hide it with the context menu. Or right click on the output and have a “show/hide label" option.
• After a document is finished, input is hidden and before printout/export is produced: A function that hides/shows all labels that are not referenced in text passages.
• A search function for equation labels in a document, or alternatively: a pallet simliar to the variable pallet to manage labels.
• Labels inside a text passage that refer to executable math with toggled input. This would allow the definition of expressions inside a text passage and use them in subsequent calculations. Example for a text passage: “If we insert for the mass m=15 kg in equation (33), the frequency response looks as follows:" plot(subs(label_of(whatever has been attributed to m=15kg),(33)),plot_range). This would reduce redundant entries in the document and potential mismatch between text and calculation results.
• Renaming of single labels (i.e. assigning an alias) either by right click on the label or by a pallet.
• Labels for non-executable math inside a text passage for further use in other text passages or later insertion in executable math.

Comments:

• There is another (not documented?) feature that is very handy: Double click on an equation label inserts the equation label at the cursor position. A nice time saver.
• Only recently I found out that single equation labels can be hidden/removed using Format>Equation Labels>Selection. Since this option was always grayed out, I could not make sense out of it, because the text was not self-explanatory to me.  Instead of Format>Equation Labels>Selection a more self-explaining menu entry would be desirable. “show/hide selection” would already better describe the action behind the menu item. However, it is still not intuitive to select output in order to make equation labels disappear (that are by the way not highlighted in blue by the selection process when only a single output/execution group is selected). There are many reasons that could make a change to self-explaning menu items not that straight forward as it sounds. In this case a mouse-over is always helpful to get more explanations on a button or a menu item. Alternatively and probably better: It would be more straight forward to select or click onto labels to manipulate them. This of course only works for one label at the time, which in my case is the most common use case.
• Equation labels are unique. They enable a work and documenting style that other math tools do not provide. If used consistently, they provide a new level of abstraction where explanatory text and computation can be combined in way that a mathematical interpreter (human or a smart machine) could proof results using only textbook style documents as input (e.g. pdf scans). At least, this is theoretically possible. However, I have noticed that many examples from users do not make use of equation labels. They are still pretty much done in a traditional programming style where loads of unnecessary variables are used. This is understandable since many people start mathematical problem solving with the aid of computers by programming. So new users to Maple use Maple pretty much the same way they were trained.
• I am fully aware that there are many applications where equation labels are not the most efficient way of producing a result. But producing a result is different from documenting results or even documenting a mathematical proof.