> community. Currently there are at least two major book writing projects
> using Maxima: "Maxima by Example" on
http://www.csulb.edu/~woollett/ and
> another on
http://www.neng.usu.edu/cee/faculty/gurro/Maxima.html There
> are lots of other tutorials and documents (including one by me!) on the
> Maxima page. But where are the user-written Axiom books and introduction
> documents? The biggest one - in fact the only one available from the Axiom
> page - seems to be Martin Dunstan's tutorial from 1996!
This is really big, but perhaps not for the reasons one might think. I have read some of Prof. Woollett's chapters and they leave something to be desired for anyone not brand spanking new to the system. In fact, for any advanced usage information, nothing seems to replace the mailing list which is perhaps 10 times as active as axiom-developer and axiom-math put together. What this does show is that Maxima has a user base that cares about it. Archaic languages such as C survive because they have a large user base, which creates more development/ease of use/portability/efficiency, which draws more people to the language. The fact that more people seem (are?) interested in Maxima makes it seem that the project is healthier than Axiom.