Ricardo Moran wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Juan Vuletich <juan at jvuletich.org 
> <mailto:juan at jvuletich.org>> wrote:
>
>     Ricardo Moran wrote:
>
>
>         On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 9:51 AM, Juan Vuletich
>         <juan at jvuletich.org <mailto:juan at jvuletich.org>
>         <mailto:juan at jvuletich.org <mailto:juan at jvuletich.org>>> wrote:
>
>            Juan Vuletich wrote:
>
>                Hi Folks,
>
>                Rodney Polkinghorne wrote:
>
>                    ...
>
>                    extra fact:
>                    - Complex is absent from Cuis
>                    
>
>                Not for long :) . I have already integrated it and will
>         be in
>                next Cuis release. I think Complex belongs in the base
>         system.
>
>
>            Oh, forgot to say. I also think that
>              -1 sqrt = 1i
>            should be true, and I'm working on it (together with some other
>            tweaks to #sqrt and friends I'll publish when finished).
>
>
>         +1. I was just about to comment on that one :)
>
>         It always bothered me that "-1 sqrt" wouldn't answer "1i". It
>         seems like an incomplete implementation, being that we have
>         the class Complex.
>         At the time I "fixed" it by just relying on the fact that the
>         sqrt primitive fails when the receiver is negative, but that
>         solution seems very hackish. I wonder what your solution looks
>         like? :)
>
>         Cheers,
>         Richo
>
>
>     I don't think it is hackish... It is the usual way for dealing
>     with cases the primitives can't deal. That's totally ok for me.
>
>
> Mmm... maybe I don't mess enough with primitives to avoid feeling 
> wrong about it :)
>  
>
>
>     What I'm trying to fix is that '4 sqrt' and '8 raisedTo: 1/3'
>     answer Floats, when they should answer SmallIntegers.
>
>
> Nice! That would allow 
>
> (4 sqrt) = (8 raisedTo: 1/3) ----> true
>

Right.

> What I would *really* like is some kind of symbolic algebra written 
> entirely in Smalltalk. But I guess it's too much to ask, right? :)
>
> Cheers,
> Richo

That would be great, but won't be part of the Number packages, I guess.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich