7.0.0

Some work was done here in support of planned future improvements like lazy loading of builtin functions. A bit of effort was also spent to modernize Python code and style, add more type annotations, remove spelling errors, and use newer versions of important software like SymPy and Python itself.

New Builtins

• $MaxLengthIntStringConversion
• Elements
• ComplexExpand (thanks to vitrun)
• ConjugateTranspose
• LeviCivitaTensor
• RealAbs and RealSign
• RealValuedNumberQ

Documentation

Many formatting issues with the PDF file have been addressed. In particular, the spacing of section numbers in chapter and section table of contents has been increased. The margin space around builtin definitions has a also been increased. Numerous spelling corrections to the document have been applied.

The code to run doctests and produce LaTeX documentation has been revised and refactored to allow incremental builtin update, and to DRY the code.

Section Head-Related Operations is a new section off of "Expression Structure". The title of the PDF has changed from Mathics to Mathics3 and the introduction has been updated and revised.

Compatibility

• *Plot does not show messages during the evaluation.
• Range[] now handles a negative di PR #951
• Improved support for DirectedInfinity and Indeterminate.
• Graphics and Graphics3D including wrong primitives and
  directives are shown with a pink background. In the Mathics-Django
  interface, a tooltip error message is also shown.
• Improving support for $CharacterEncoding. Now it is possible to
  change it from inside the session.

Internals ---

• eval_abs and eval_sign extracted from Abs and Sign and added to mathics.eval.arithmetic.
• Maximum number of digits allowed in a string set to 7000 and can be adjusted using environment variable MATHICS_MAX_STR_DIGITS on Python versions that don't adjust automatically (like pyston).
• Real number comparisons implemented is based now in the internal implementation of RealSign.
• For Python 3.11, the variable $MaxLengthIntStringConversion controls the maximum size of the literal conversion between large integers and Strings.
• Older style non-appearing and non-pedagogical doctests have been converted to pytest
• Built-in code is directed explicitly rather than implicitly. This facilitates the ability to lazy load builtins or "autoload" them via GNU Emacs autoload.
• add mpmath lru cache
• Some works was done to make it possible so that in the future we can speed up initial loading and reduce the initial memory footprint

Bugs

• Definitions is compatible with pickle.
• Improved support for Quantity expressions, including conversions, formatting and arithmetic operations.
• Background option for Graphics and Graphics3D is operative again.
• Numeric comparisons against expressions involving Strings; Issue #797)
• Switch[] involving Infinity. Issue #956
• Outer[] on SparseArray. Issue #939
• ArrayQ[] detects SparseArray PR #947
• BoxExpressionError exceptions handled Issue. PR #970
• Derivative evaluation of True, False and List[] corrected. PR #971, #973
• Combinatorica package fixes. PR #974
• Exit[] not working. PR #998
• BaseForm is now listed as in $OutputForms

API

We now require an explicit call to a new functionimport_and_load_builtins(). Previously loading was implicit and
indeterminate as to when this occurred as it was based on import order.

We need this so that we can support in the future lazy loading of builtin modules.

Package updates

1. Python 3.11 is now supported
2. Sympy 1.12 is now supported

6.0.4

Fixed botched 6.0.3 release:

Correct type annotation in mathics.session.MathicsSession

See #934

6.0.3

Correct type annotation in mathics.session.MathicsSession

See #934

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

Change testing to facilitate openSUSE Tumbleweed distribution which uses Sympy 1.12. See Issue #881.

6.0.1

Release to get Pillow 9.2 dependency added for Python 3.7+

Note that future releases in the 6.1 or 7.0 range will drop support for Python 3.6.

Some Pattern-matching code gone over to add type annotations and to start documenting its behavior and characteristics. Function
attributes are now examined and stored at the time of Pattern-object creation rather than at evaluation time. This better matches WMA behavior which pulls out attribute this even earlier than this. These changes speed up doctest running time by about 7% under Pyston.

Combinatorica version upgraded from 0.9 (circa 1992) to 0.91 (circa 1995) which closer matches the published book.

Random Builtin function documentation gone over to conform to current documentation style.

Too late for Valentines Day

A fair bit of code refactoring has gone on so that we might be able to scale the code, get it to be more performant, and more in line with other interpreters. There is greater use of Symbols as opposed to strings.

The builtin Functions have been organized into grouping akin to what is found in WMA. This is not just for documentation purposes, but it better modularizes the code and keep the modules smaller while suggesting where functions below as we scale.

Image Routines have been gone over and fixed. Basically we use Pillow imaging routines and as opposed to home-grown image code.

A number of Built-in functions that were implemented were not accessible for various reasons.

Mathics3 Modules are better integrated into the documentation. Existing Mathics3 modules pymathics.graph and pymathics.natlang have had a major overhaul, although more is needed. And will continue after the 6.0.0 release

We have gradually been rolling in more Python type annotations and current Python practices such as using isort, black and flake8.

Evaluation methods of built-in functions start eval_ not apply_.

API

1. New function mathics.system_info.python_implementation() shows the Python Implementation, e.g. CPython, PyPy, Pyston that is running Python. This is included in the information mathics.system_info.mathics_system__system_info() returns and is used in $PythonImplementation
2. A list of optional software can be found in mathics.optional_software. Versions of that software are included in mathics.version_info.

Package update

• SymPy 1.11.1 accepted
• Numpy 1.24.0 accepted

New Builtins

• $BoxForms
• $OutputForms
• $PrintForms
• $PythonImplementation
• Accuracy
• ClebschGordan
• Curl (2-D and 3-D vector forms only)
• DiscretePlot
• Kurtosis
• ListLogPlot
• LogPlot
• $MaxMachineNumber
• $MinMachineNumber
• NumberLinePlot
• PauliMatrix
• Remove
• SetOptions
• SixJSymbol
• Skewness
• ThreeJSymbol

Documentation

1. All Builtins have links to WMA pages.
2. "Accuracy and Precision" section added to the Tutorial portion.
3. "Attribute Definitions" section reinstated.
4. "Expression Structure" split out as a guide section (was "Structure of Expressions").
5. "Exponential Functional" split out from "Trigonometry Functions"
6. "Functional Programming" section split out.
7. "Image Manipulation" has been split off from Graphics and Drawingand turned into a guide section.
8. Image examples now appear in the LaTeX and therfore the PDF doc
9. "Logic and Boolean Algebra" section reinstated.
10. "Forms of Input and Output" is its own guide section.
11. More URL links to Wiki pages added; more internal cross links added.
12. "Units and Quantities" section reinstated.
13. The Mathics3 Modules are now included in LaTeX and therefore the PDF doc.

Internals

• boxes_to_ methods are now optional for BoxElement subclasses. Most of the code is now moved to the mathics.format submodule, and implemented in a more scalable way.
• from_mpmath conversion supports a new parameter acc to set the accuracy of the number.
• mathics.builtin.inout was split in several modules (inout, messages, layout, makeboxes) in order to improve the documentation.
• mathics.eval was create to have code that might be put in an instruction interpreter. The opcodes-like functions start eval_, other functions are helper functions for those.
• Operator name to Unicode or ASCII comes from Mathics scanner character tables.
• Builtin instance methods that start eval are considered rule matching and function application; the use of the name applyis deprecated, when eval is intended.
• Modularize and improve the way in which Builtin classes are selected to have an associated Definition.
• _SetOperator.assign_elementary was renamed _SetOperator.assign. All the special cases are not handled by the _SetOperator.special_cases dict.
• isort run over all Python files. More type annotations and docstrings on functions added.
• caching on immutable atoms like, String, Integer, Real, etc. was improved; the __hash__() function was sped up. There is asmall speedup overall from this at the expense of increased memory.
• more type annotations added to functions, especially builtin functions
• Numerical constants used along the code was renamed using caps, according to the Python's convention.

Bugs

• 0 with a given precision (like in 0`3) is now parsed as 0, an integer number.
• Reading certain GIFs now work again
• Random[] works now.
• RandomSample with one list argument now returns a random ordering of the list items. Previously it would return just one item.
• Origin placement corrected on ListPlot and LinePlot.
• Fix long-standing bugs in Image handling
• Some scikit image routines line EdgeDetect were getting omitted due to overly stringent PyPI requirements
• Units and Quantities were sometimes failing. Also they were omitted from documentation.
• Better handling of Infinite quantities.
• Improved Precision and Accuracycompatibility with WMA. In particular, Precision[0.] and Accuracy[0.]
• Accuracy in numbers using the notation n.nnn``acc now is properly handled.
• numeric precision in mpmath was not reset after operations that changed these. This cause huges slowdowns after an operation that set the mpmath precison high. This was the source of several-minute slowdowns in testing.
• GIF87a (```MadTeaParty.gif`` or ExampleData) image loading fixed
• Replace non-free Leena image with a a freely distributable image. Issue #728

PyPI Package requirements

Mathics3 aims at a more richer set of functionality.

Therefore NumPy and Pillow (9.10 or later) are required Python packages where they had been optional before. In truth, probably running Mathics without one or both probably did not work well if it worked at all; we had not been testing setups that did not have NumPy.

Enhancements

• Vector restriction on Norm[] removed. "Frobinius" p-form allowed.
• Better handling of comparisons with finite precision numbers.
• Improved implementation for Precision.
• Infix operators, like -> render with their Unicode symbol when $CharacterEncoding is not "ASCII".
  *Grid compatibility with WMA was improved. Now it supports non-uniform list of lists and lists with general elements.
• Support for BigEndian Big TIFF

5.0.2

Rerelease to get requirements-cython.txt into tarball.

Get ready for release 5.0.1

Overview

Mostly a release to fix a Python packaging problem.

• format and do_format methods were removed from the interface of
  BaseElement, becoming non-member functions.
• The class BoxElement was introduced as a base for boxing elements.

New Builtin

• 'Inverse Gudermannian'.

Documentation

Hyperbolic functions were split off form trigonometry and exponential functions. More url links were added.

Bugs

*r Creating a complex number from Infinity no longer crashes and returns 'I * Infinity'

Just when you though you had forgotten Mathics3

Table of Contents

• New Builtins
• Enhancements
• Documentation
• Internals
  • Speed improvements:
  • Package update
• Compatibility
• Bugs
• Incompatible changes

This release starts to address some of the performance problems and
terminology confusion that goes back to the very beginning. As a result,
this release is not API compatible with prior releases.

In conjunction with the performance improvement in this release, we
start refactoring some of the core classes and modules to start to get
this to look and act more like other interpreters, and to follow more
current Python practice.

More work will continue in subsequent releases.

New Builtins

1. Euler's Beta function.
2. Bernoulli.
3. CatalanNumber (Integer arguments only).
4. CompositeQ.
5. Diagonal. Issue #115.
6. Divisible.
7. EllipticE
8. EllipticF
9. EllipticK
10. EllipticPi
11. EulerPhi
12. $Echo. Issue #42.
13. FindRoot was improved for supporting numerical derivatives Issue
    #67, as well as the use of scipy libraries when are available.
14. FindRoot (for the newton method) partially supports
    EvaluationMonitor and StepMonitor options.
15. FindMinimum and FindMaximum now have a minimal implementation
    for 1D problems and the use of scipy libraries when are available.
16. LogGamma.
17. ModularInverse.
18. NumericFunction.
19. Projection.
20. Partial support for Graphics option Opacity.
21. SeriesData operations was improved.
22. TraceEvaluation[] shows expression name calls and return values of
    it argument.
    • Pass option ShowTimeBySteps, to show accumulated time before
      each step
    • The variable $TraceEvalution when set True will show all
      expression evaluations.
23. TraditionalForm

Enhancements

1. D acts over Integrate and NIntegrate. Issue #130.
2. SameQ (===) handles chaining, e.g. a == b == c or
   SameQ[a, b, c].
3. Simplify handles expressions of the form Simplify[0^a] Issue
   #167.
4. Simplify and FullSimplify support optional parameters
   Assumptions and ComplexityFunction.
5. UnsameQ (=!=) handles chaining, e.g. a =!= b =!= c or
   UnsameQ[a, b, c].
6. Assignments to usage messages associated with Symbols is allowed
   as it is in WMA. With this and other changes, Combinatorica 2.0
   works as written.
7. Share[] performs an explicit call to the Python garbage collection
   and returns the amount of memory free.
8. Improve the compatibility of TeXForm and MathMLForm outputs with
   WMA. MathML tags around numbers appear as "<mn>" tags instead of
   "<mtext>", except in the case of InputForm expressions. In
   TeXForm some quotes around strings have been removed to conform to
   WMA. It is not clear whether this is the correct behavior.
9. Allow scipy and skimage to be optional. In particular: revise
   Nintegrate[] to use Method="Internal" when scipy isn't
   available.
10. Pyston up to versions from 2.2 to 2.3.4 are supported as are PyPy
    versions from 3.7-7.3.9.0 up 3.9-7.3.9. However those Python
    interpreters may have limitations and limitations on packages that
    they support.
11. Improved support for Series Issue #46.
12. Cylinder rendering is implemented in Asymptote.

Documentation

1. "Testing Expressions" section added.
2. "Representation of Numbers" section added.
3. "Descriptive Statistics" section added and "Moments" folded into
   that.
4. Many More URL references. <url> now supports link text.
5. Referecne Chapter and Sections are now in alphabetical order
6. Two-column mode was removed in most sections so the printed PDF
   looks nicer.
7. Printed Error message output in test examples is in typewriter font
   and doesn't drop inter-word spaces.

Internals

1. Inexplicably, what the rest of the world calls a "nodes" in a tree
   or or in WMA "elements" in a tree had been called a "leaves". We
   now use the proper term "element".
2. Lots of predefined Symbols have been added. Many appear in the
   module mathics.core.systemsymbols.
3. Attributes are now stored in a bitset instead of a tuple of string.
   This speeds up attributes read, and RAM usage, .
4. Symbol.is_numeric and Expression.is_numeric now uses the
   attribute Definition.is_numeric to determine the returned value.
5. NIntegrate internal algorithms and interfaces to scipy were
   moved to mathics.algorithm.integrators and
   mathics.builtin.scipy_utils.integrators respectively.
6. N[Integrate[...]] now is evaluated as NIntegrate[...]
7. Definitions for symbols CurrentContext and ContextPath[] are
   mirrored in the mathics.core.definitions.Definitions object for
   faster access.
8. FullForm[List[...]] is shown as {...} according to the WL
   standard.
9. Expression.is_numeric() accepts an Evaluation object as a
   parameter; the definitions attribute of that is used.
10. SameQ first checks the type, then the id, and then names in
    symbols.
11. In mathics.builtin.patterns.PatternTest, if the condition is one
    of the most used tests (NumberQ, NumericQ, StringQ, etc) the
    match method is overwritten to specialized versions that avoid
    function calls.
12. mathics.core.patterns.AtomPattern specializes the comparison
    depending of the Atom type.
13. To speed up development, you can set NO_CYTHON to skip Cythonizing
    Python modules. If you are using Pyston or PyPy, Cythonization slows
    things down.
14. any andall calls were unrolled as loops in Cythonized modules:
    this avoids the overhead of a function call replacing it by a (C)
    for loop, which is faster.
15. A bug was fixed relating to the order in which
    mathics.core.definitions stores the rules
16. InstanceableBuiltin -> BuiltinElement
17. BoxConstruction -> BoxExpression
18. the method Element.is_true() was removed in favor of
    is SymbolTrue
19. N[_,_,Method->method] was reworked. Issue #137.
20. The methods boxes_to_* were moved to BoxExpression.
21. remove flatten_* from the Atom interface.
22. Definition has a new property is_numeric.

Speed improvements:

1. Creating two Symbol objects with the same name will give the same
   object. This avoids unnecessary string comparisons, and calls to
   ensure_context.
2. Attributes are now stored in a bitset instead of a tuple of strings.
3. The Definitions object has two properties: current_contex and
   context_path. This speeds up the lookup of symbols names. These
   properties store their values into the corresponding symbols in the
   builtin definitions.
4. eval_N was add to speed up the then often-used built-in function
   N.
5. Expression evaluation was gone over and improved. properties on
   the collection which can speed up evaluation, such as whether an
   expression is fully evaluated, is ordered, or is flat are collected.
6. List evaluation is customized. There is a new ListExpression
   class which has a more streamlined evaluate() method. More of this
   kind of thing will follow
7. BaseExpression.get_head avoids building a symbol saving two
   function calls.

Package update

1. SymPy 1.10.1

Compatibility

1. ScriptCommandLine now returns, as the first element, the name of
   the script file (when available), for compatibility with WMA. Issue
   #132.

2. Expression.numerify improved in a way to obtain a behavior closer
   to WMA.

3. NumericQ lhs expressions are now handled as a special case in assignment. For example NumericQ[a]=True tells the interpreter that a must be considered

4. a numeric quantity, so NumericQ[Sin[a]] evaluates to True.

Bugs

1. First, Rest and Last now handle invalid arguments.
2. Set*: fixed issue #128.
3. SameQ: comparison with MachinePrecision only needs to be exact
   within the last bit Issue #148.
4. Fix a bug in Simplify that produced expressions of the form
   ConditionalExpression[_,{True}].
5. Fix bug in Clear and ClearAll (#194).
6. Fix base 10 formatting for infix Times. Issue #266.
7. Partial fix of FillSimplify
8. Streams used in MathicsOpen are now freed and their file descriptors
   now released. Issue #326.
9. Some temporary files that were created are now removed from the
   filesystem. Issue #309.
10. There were a number of small changes/fixes involving NIntegrate
    and its Method options. Nintegrate tests have been expanded.
11. Fix a bug in handling arguments of pythonized expressions, that are
    produced by Compile when the llvmlite compiler fails.
12. N now handles arbitrary precision numbers when the number of
    digits is not specified.
13. [N[Indeterminate]]{.title-ref} now produces
    [Indeterminate]{.title-ref} instead a
    [PrecisionReal(nan)]{.title-ref}.
14. Fix crash in NestWhile when supplying All as the fourth
    argument.
15. Fix the comparison between Image and other expressions.
16. Fix an issue that prevented that [Collect]{.title-ref} handles
    properly polynomials on expressions (issue #285).
17. Fix a bug in formatting expressions of the form (-1)^a without the
    parenthesis (issue #332).
18. Fix a but in failure in the order in which
    mathics.core.definitions stores the rules.
19. Numeric overflows now do not affect the full evaluation, but inste...