When to Stay Away from the Book Mode

In some situations you should stay away from using a book mode  environment when conversing with Maxima. This is the case always whenever Maxima is likely to ask you further questions about a specific evaluation. This will happen, for example, when you attempt to integrate a function, and Maxima needs additional information about signs of various symbols. I you have already forked a Maxima process to which your book mode talks, you should be able to locate its corresponding Emacs buffer by issuing the command 

C-x b *maxima-eval*

Once in that buffer carry on the computation:

If you issued the integrate directive from within the book mode, Emacs would end up hanging. The book mode, as you see, is a somewhat mixed blessing.

In plain mathematical notation, we have just produced the following result:

$$\int_0^\beta x^2 \sin{\alpha x} \, \hbox{d}x = \frac{2 \alph... ...^2\right) \cos{\alpha\beta}} {\alpha^3} - \frac{2}{\alpha^3}$$

Maple doesn't ask this kind of questions for this integral. The result is also grouped somewhat differently:

that is

$$\int_0^\beta x^2 \sin{\alpha x} \, \hbox{d}x = - \frac{\alph... ...s{\alpha\beta} - 2 \alpha\beta\sin{\alpha\beta} + 2}{\alpha^3}$$

Mathematica notation has its usual quirks here, and, moreover, Mathematica warns you about a possible confusion with the Zeeman Beta function.