On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:11 PM, parisse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Ondrej, Bernard, and Tim have been sort of arguing in response to >> Rob Dodier's nice post... In their discussion they are I think seeing >> everything too much in black and white, and missing the shades >> of grey. Here's what we actually do in Sage: >> >> 1. Identify needed functionality (e.g., compute characteristic >> polynomials of matrices, or "symbolic calculus"). >> >> 2. Find the existing best open source free option that >> implements 1, if there is any (e.g., say the pari C library >> in the above example, or "maxima" + a very sophisticated >> Python interface). >> > > Then there is a natural question arising here: did you really review > all the existing open source CAS at that time and how did you choose?
We tried. > I don't have an exact picture of the functionnalities of CAS in 2005 > but it seems to me that giac/xcas was already in the same class than > maxima (with of course some - and some +) and axiom certainly remains > a leader in symbolic integration. Much more than just functionality is important. Number of developers, users, documentation, build support, "bus factor", popularity (Maxima is *by far* the most popular open source computer algebra system), etc. > Then the question is not really "which is the best CAS" because I > believe that the answer will depend on the needs of the user. But I > had the impression that Sage tries to use for each algorithm the best > open-source software. If this is really the objective of Sage, then > you can't have a single answer for CASes. Sometimes it is better to > call axiom, sometimes maxima and sometimes xcas and sometimes maybe > another CAS. Therefore my question: what is the roadmap of Sage for > symbolic computations? Really reimplement from scratch everything, > slowly replacing maxima? Maybe. It depends on what developers actually succeed at doing. Nobody knows whether or not this will really happen. > Or build interfaces to e.g. axiom or giac or > *put here your favorite open-source CAS* and use the best one > depending on the kind of problem. Maybe. It depends on what developers actually succeed at doing. Nobody knows whether or not this will really happen. > If it is the first possibility, then I loose my time here and I'll > have a much better job to speak directly with axiom and maxima > developers if they are interested to discuss with me. It's certainly a good idea to speak with the axiom and maxima developers. I love talking with them. 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
