Since Maple comes with source code that one can display. Even though it is stripped of all comments, which makes it hard to follow sometimes, I was wondering if there are any tools to help one get the large picture of what is there without having to step and go through all the thousands and thousands of the help pages jumping from one to another and losing the path.

I am looking for something similar to the tree program one finds on Unix, but applied to Maple's logical package hierarchy.

Since Maple has thousands of packages and subpackages and some has sub subpackages and then thousands of commands below all these, such an automated tool will be useful.

For example, I could ask it to show me top level packages and subpackages only (and not show the names of all the functions below that). This will help one see what is out there at a glance. i.e. see the big picture.

Here is an example of tree command I found on the net. But instead of looking at directories, the maple one will look at logical package tree.

For example, I just made short example for the Student package now

But doing the above by hand for everything is not practical. The above is just partial view of one package, and there are hundreds others. 

It will be nice if there is a tool, where one can tell to show the Maple package tree and the level of details to show. This will help one learn Maple better also.

The output of such tool does not even have to graphical. It could plain text, something like this

Student
      LinearAlgebra
               Basis
               IntersectionBasis
               etc.....
      Calculus1
               ......
               ......
Physics
DataSets
.....

      
       

Alignment is done using tabs for example to help show the structure.

Any suggestions?

When I use something like plots[display](Array([p1,p2]));  And the plots p1,p2 have been resized before to be small, there is lots of wasted empty space in the final result. I have to manually adjust the size of each Array entry with the mouse to make the fit better. But this solution is not practical. 

Is there an option to do this automatically? Here is an example

restart;

p1:=plot(sin(x), x=-Pi..Pi, size=[300,300]):
p2:=plot(cos(x), x=-Pi..Pi, size=[300,300]):
plots[display](Array([p1,p2]));   #one option
plots[display](Vector[row]([p1,p2])); #another option

Manually, using the mouse, I can, after some adjustments and trrial and errors, get the final result such that the wasted space is removed.

I am asking, becuase if I want to save/export the above final plot as PDF to include in a Latex document, it will look bad with that wasted space there.

How to do this adjustment using code?

In Mathematica for example, this is done using Grid and the Spacing option. I could not find something similar in Maple but I could have overlooked it.

Maple's plot3d makes nice plots, but it is not quite polished enough I feel.

When I compared the same plot with what I get with Mathematica, I found these 3 issues shown below. I am not too good in Maple, so I am not able to see how to improve on this any more.

The Maple code is

restart;
f:=-x^4-2*y^4+14*x^2*y^2/5:
plot3d(f, x=-5..5,y=-5..5,
   axes     = boxed,
   axesfont = [Times,default,10],
   axis[1]  = [tickmarks=[3,subticks=5]],
   axis[2]  = [tickmarks=[3,subticks=5]],
   axis[3]  = [tickmarks=[3,subticks=5]],
   labeldirections = [horizontal, horizontal, horizontal],	
   labels   = ['x', 'y', 'z'],
   scaling  = unconstrained) 

Compare to Mathematica's output

f = -x^4 + (14*x^2*y^2)/5 - 2*y^4; 
Plot3D[f, {x, -5, 5}, {y, -5, 5}, 
 AxesLabel -> {"x", "y", "z"}, 
 PlotRange -> All, 
 BoxRatios -> {1, 1, 1}, ImageSize -> 400]

Another major limitation in Maple's plot3d, is that it does not support `BoxRatios` like option. I asked about this years ago and got help on it, but nothing very satisfactory to use in geneal.

https://www.mapleprimes.com/questions/217092-How-To-Change-box-Ratio-Or-3D-Aspect

I hope Maplesoft can improve on this in next version.

Any suggestion how to improve the above 3 issues for now? The ticks issues for me seems the most annoying, becuase they keep moving around as I rotate the 3d plot.

Maple 2020 on windows 10

Not that I care about the virtual rating numbers here, but I am wondering why would one suddenly lose 15 point after posting a problem they found in Maple? Is this typical?

https://www.mapleprimes.com/questions/229443-Why-These-ODEs-Hang-Or-Return-Unsolved

3 hrs ago, I was 3001  and when I came to check on the status if any, now it says 2986.

Just wondering why, that is all. Again, this really does not bother me at all as I do not care about these virtual cloud credit points, and I only post here on occasions and when I found some problem. I just like to know why this happened just now, that is all. 

When I tried these ODE's in Maple 2019, and Maple 2018, they are worked (i.e. gave solutions). Now these ODE's either hang in 2020 or return unsolved. What could have caused this? On Maple 2020, under windows 10:

restart;
ode:=(x^2-1)*diff(y(x),x)^2-y(x)^2+1=0:
dsolve(ode); #hangs

restart;
ode:=(2*x^2+1)*diff(y(x),x)^2+(y(x)^2+2*x*y(x)+x^2+2)*diff(y(x),x)+2*y(x)^2+1=0:
dsolve(ode); # return unsolved

restart;
ode:=x*y(x)^2*diff(y(x),x)^3-y(x)^3*diff(y(x),x)^2+x*(x^2+1)*diff(y(x),x)-x^2*y(x):
dsolve(ode); # return unsolved

restart;
ode:=(diff(y(x),x) = (-y(x)^2+4*a*x)^3/(-y(x)^2+4*a*x-1)/y(x)):
dsolve(ode); #hangs

I noticed that in Maple 2019.2 this problem is also there. But not in Maple 2019.  So something changed from after Maple 2019.

Here is worksheet on Maple 2018 that shows these worked there. But no longer work on Maple 2020. There might be more like these but these the ones I found so far.

issue.mw