Miscellaneous changes

• Maple no longer has two representations for the complex unit i . The unique representation is (-1)^(1/2) and the symbol I is initially an alias for (-1)^(1/2).
• Radical powers of rationals are now automatically reduced, e.g.

  
      > (2/3)^(-3/2);
                                        1/2  1/2
                                   3/4 3    2

• Different radicals are no longer automatically combined so as to preserve a canonical form. The combine function can be used to combine radicals except the imaginary constant I. For example:

  
      > a := I+2^(1/2)+3^(1/2):
      > a := expand(a^2);
                                   1/2        1/2      1/2  1/2
                     a := 4 + 2 I 2    + 2 I 3    + 2 2    3

  
      > combine(a,power);
                                   1/2        1/2      1/2
                          4 + 2 I 2    + 2 I 3    + 2 6

• The library routine log has been extended to allow different bases. log[b](x) denotes log base of .
• The mtaylor function (multivariate taylor series) now returns a Maple sum of products and accepts integral weights for the variables.
• Addition of norm and trace operations to GF (Galois Field package)
• Addition of Bessels equation to dsolve.
• The solve command for solving systems of equations now accepts an additional argument split which directs solve to try to split a system into one or more simpler systems using factorization at every step.
• The coeff function has been extended to understand coeff(p,x^n) for to be equivalent to coeff(p,x,n) meaning the coefficient of in .
• The alias and macro facilities no longer affect parameters and local variables. I.e. one can have an alias I and a local variable I simultaneously. Also, alias now will return a sequence of all current alias's.
• The POINT option in the 2-dimensional plotting has been improved to print crosses + instead of dots.
• Since the neutral operator &* is being used for matrix multiplication, it has been given the same precedence as * (multiplication).
• New Iris variable endcolon returns true iff the last statement was terminated with a colon (instead of a semi-colon).
• The semantics of the read statement inside a Maple procedure has changed from stacking the input to reading and executing the input immediately.
• These functions that previously existed are now readlib defined:
  allvalues, compoly, discrim, eqn, fortran, latex, norm, plot3d, select.
• The library routine userinfo can be used to generate user information messages for a function during the course of a computation. In future versions of Maple, this facility will be exploited in the Maple library to generate information about what Maple is doing.
• The rsolve function now takes an optional directive ztrans to solve recurrences or systems of recurrence equations using Z transforms.
• The rsolve function can now solve a large class of 1st order equations and more complicated nonhomogeneous linear equations, e.g.

  
      > rsolve( {y(n) = n*y(n-1) + (n-1)!, y(0) = 1}, y(n) );
  
                     GAMMA(n + 1) (Psi(n + 1) + gamma + 1)

• The isolve function (for integer solutions to equations) can now solve a single equation of Pythagorean type, i.e. where are integers. In the example below, the %labels stand for repeated common subexpressions, and _N1, _N2, _N3 stand for arbitrary integers.

  
      >  isolve(2*x^2-7*y^2+5*z^2);
  
                 _N3 %1                _N3 %3                _N3 %2
       {z = ----------------, x = ----------------, y = ----------------}
            igcd(%1, %2, %3)      igcd(%1, %2, %3)      igcd(%1, %2, %3)

  
                                 2                    2
      %1 :=               - 5 _N1  - 4 _N1 _N2 + 2 _N2
  
                                     2        2
      %2 :=                     5 _N1  + 2 _N2
  
                               2                     2
      %3 :=               5 _N1  - 10 _N1 _N2 - 2 _N2