Re: ideas about representing degrees as Maxima expressions

On Thu, Apr 30, 2026 at 12:43 AM Robert Dodier <[email protected]>
wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 9:19 AM Stavros Macrakis <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> ...
> > 2*degrees(10) => degrees(20) <<< OK
> > (-1)*degrees(10) => -degrees(10)  <<< why not degrees(-10)?
>
> Well, this is the subtle part. degrees(d, m, s) simplifies by carrying
> minutes from s into m, carrying degrees from m into d, and taking d
> modulo 360. This last bit produces degrees(-10) --> degrees(350).
>

Really? Why are you doing modular arithmetic on degrees? We don't do it for
radians. After all, two full turns are 4*%pi = 720 degrees -- nothing
strange about that.


> Yeah, as it stands, the degrees simplifier doesn't extract minutes and
> seconds from fractions. I was thinking that if someone writes
> degrees(122.832933), it probably wouldn't help to simplify that to
> degrees(122, 49, 58.5588).
>

I'd think you want a global option for how to present them: fractional
degrees or degrees/minutes/seconds.

How do you handle the inverse functions? i.e. how do you get asin(1/2) => 30°
? Is that degrees(asin(1/2))?

            -s

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