As technically hard as it might be, I think having a native Windows version of Sage - even if it includes only a subset of the standard packages - would likely be a big factor in attracting more users. In my experience with Axiom, potential Windows users out number Linux users by a large number (maybe a factor of 100 or more). Windows users are very reluctant in install Linux in a virtual machine or even cygwin just to run Sage. (If they were willing they would probably already be running Linux.) Having even a subset of Sage available as a native Windows application would introduce many more users to Sage and probably motivate some of them to install Linux in order to access the full version.
I think the best tool for building a native Windows version of Sage is probably MSYS/MinGW which is really a cross-compiler and gnu tool set that provides a Linux-like environment only during the build. The end product is a native Windows application that does not depend on any Linux emulation layer. Unfortunately some of the standard packages in Sage can not be built in this way and to make matters worse, as far as I know the pexpect module that is required for interface with packages like Maxima has not been successfully ported to Windows. Regards, Bill Page. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
