On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Alfredo Portes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi William, > > Given that I started this thread, I will try to share some of my ideas > regarding your questions. > > I am not an Axiom developer, probably Bill Page can answer > these questions better than anybody. > > > On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 10:29 AM, William Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > Sage is not going away (It should not go away!) and I think the > Axiom > > > > community needs to deal with how it should interact with Sage in the > > > > I hope Sage doesn't go away :-), since I really like open source > > math software. Certainly improving Sage/Axiom community > > interaction would be good. > > One thing it will be good to start differentiating the projects. Like > currently > the interface to Sage uses Fricas but it says Axiom...I know this is annoying > but I think it is something it should be done. This also applies to > OpenAxiom. >
I hope you fix this and submit a patch :-) > > > The part of Sage that deals with the web interface is written > > in pure Python and depends only on Python, Twisted, and > > Pexpect. At present it is somewhat tightly integrated into > > the Sage distribution. But this is only *temporary*, which > > we intend to change in the future, most likely this summer. > > Thus if you just want to have an Axiom GUI and or web notebook > > interface, you could just ship or depend on > > > > Python+Twisted+Pexpect+a small part of Sage. > > > > There is also Knoboo by some other Sage developers, > > which isn't as stable and full featured (yet!), but looks > > very nice: http://knoboo.com/ > > An this is very good news. In my opinion the Sage Notebook can become > the default interface to all of these systems ... and by promoting it > in this way you can find many more developers from other projects, so > having the Sage Notebook as a separate but related project like you did > with Cython will be good. Of course you would need somebody to take > the lead (Alex maybe? :-). A good unifying graphical interface is extremely important to creating something that is a viable alternative to Maple/Mathematica/Magma/Matlab. In some sense it is perhaps it is *the* most important thing. > > > > I don't understand the Axiom distribution enough to understand > > how big it is, but my impression is that it is *also* huge. Looking > > in the src/src/algebra directory there are many hundreds of > > thousands of lines of code (over 300,000 distinct lines just of > > > How does the fricas/axiom source code layout work? > > Is it all written in pamphlets that lisp is generated from? > > Anyway, I would love if somebody who knows what they > > are talking about regarding axiom (not me!) would > > explain what the human-written/readable code > > parts of the axiom distro are and roughly how big each is, > > in some sense. Or just point me to an article or wiki page > > about this. And who are some of the Axiom original > > authors? Some files have headers like: > > > > ++ Author: Grabmeier, Gschnitzer, Williamson > > ++ Date Created: 1987 > > ++ Date Last Updated: July 1990 > > > > I wonder who those guys were...? > > The issue of the size came about because of if we want to use > the Sage notebook. As mentioned above this is no problem. But I am just plain curious about the size of Axiom. > The other thing was for Axiom or Fricas or > OpenAxiom to replace Maxima in Sage, but I know there is not > enough lobbying power :-) for this to happen. > > > > This is an area where I think the Sage project could really use help > > from some of the Fricas people; namely it would be great if we could > > get Maxima to build on ECLS, since then we could get rid of clisp > > completely. Since Axiom has been ported to ECLS, maybe > > Waldek or whoever could help a little with getting Maxima to > > run on ECLS. > > I would think that Waldek will help to get Fricas running in Sage as > a standard component. That will be a good way of keeping a system > like Axiom alive. Waldek has been very helpful getting Axiom to stay an optional Sage package, by making it easy to build with clisp. > > > > You are not mistaken that Axiom does have interesting and huge > > packages. > > > > You guys could certainly make a version of Sage that includes Axiom along > > with anything extra and built however you want, with maybe some > > Axiom-specific enhancements. Just install Sage, install axiom into > > it, and type > > sage -bdist sage-axiom-3.0 > > and look in your > > dist/ > > subdirectory for the resulting binary. > > You mean Fricas or OpenAxiom right :-) > Yep. > > I can't explain to you why Axiom definitely hasn't been made a > > part of Sage, and that it is unlikely to happen as far as I can tell. > > Probably one of the most honest reasons is that I guess few > > of the active Sage developers are also Axiom users/developers, > > so maybe we're ignorant. I don't know. Nowadays, nothing ever gets into > > Sage by just "hoping a lot". Usually somebody has to really really > > want it, make many many compelling arguments, demonstrate > > use cases, offer to work hard to solve problems that come up > > with integration of the component into Sage, etc. Also, we have > > pretty strict rules about platforms that have to be fully supported. > > But isn't Axiom like the "mac daddy" off all CAS or is this all vapor ware??? I don't know. > Isn't Axiom better than Maxima? I don't know. For some things Axiom is probably better. For others Maxima is probably better. When I talked to people who worked on the original projects, they say there was a lot of exchange back and forth between the two. >From the point of view of the future and developers, my impression is that neither project excites a lot of modern developers because they are written in lisp and ALDOR. This is just an observation, and I'm not making any claims about the quality of either language or trying to start a flame war. It's just that language choices do influence the type of programmers one gets: http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html Maxima has I think more users than Axiom. Just look at the size of the mailing list archives for this year for Maxima: http://www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima/2008/thread.html But still the number of users of Axiom + Maxima + Sage (probably less than 50,000 in the world?) still pails in comparison to the number of users of Maple (easily 1 million?). And that's the *real* problem we should be worrying -- and worrying *hard* -- about. > or this is not the case anymore? I say > this because maybe many people out there can show why Axiom would > be useful. Didn't Bill convince you at Sage Days :-) Bill Page did a lot of heroic work which we greatly appreciate, and we learned a great deal from him. Thanks Bill!! > > > > > > > b) merge our community into the Sage community > > > > Yes, that would be great too. I think there should just be one big > > community of open source mathematics software developers, > > all trying to together do a better job than the closed commercial > > Maple/Mathematica/Magma communities. > > Well this is hard to do. There are currently a lead developer for each of the > projects. What does it mean to merge communities? So I assume you > will have to decide on which project you want to merge and talk to that > person. > I know it sounds divisive, but I think a decision needs to be made. All I mean I guess is something psychological. We view each other as being on the same team, and have a common goal, which is to genuinely compete with Maple/Mathematica/Matlab/Magma. By the way, regarding Sage, though I'm the lead developer decision making is done via some form of voting. The main reasons for this is so that we can more efficiently make more correct decisions, and also to reduce the Sage bus factor. -- William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
