> Gee, that reminds me of our plans long ago to publish > hardcopies of these volumes on www.lulu.com . I haven't > looked at these volumes lately. What would be your estimate > of how much work remains before we could submit something? > Do you think getting these published should have a higher/ > lower priority than some of the other (more interesting?) > stuff?
There are 4 volumes in book--main--1: Vol 1: Tutorial Vol 2: Programming Vol 3: Reference Vol 4: Developers Guide I've been working my way back thru the email archives and extracting emails that need to be integrated into these volumes. I've also split up the book into the related volumes. There is much work to be done and I have no time estimate. Documentation is vital and good documentation takes much longer than anyone expects. I'm looking into parts of the system and have decided to write some debugging techniques and documentation on writing pamphlet files so most of my effort is going into volume 4. > > Since I now just about have the pamphlet support on MathAction > working the way I want and the new book volumes are in the > form of pamphlet files, I wonder if it would make it easier for > other to contribute if I were to put these up on MathAction? > This would allow direct editing through the web. If I did this, > because of their size, maybe it would be a good idea to split > the volumes out further to chapter sized documents and then > define a master document for printing? We can try putting the volumes online. Provided they still retain their pamphlet format (ie latex) I think it's a reasonable idea. I'm a little concerned about changes that would use things like structured text, html, or other non-latex information in the files. Those are fine for the wiki but not for the system files, of which the book volumes are the cornerstone in my mind. Later I want to develop a few more volumes that are related to pieces of the system. For example I think Vol 5: Categories, Domains, and Package Internals Vol 6: The compiler Vol 7: The interpreter Vol 8: The algebra where these contain, structure, and build upon the sources. Volume 5 would explain the static and dynamic data structures, file structures and manipulation functions. Volume 6 would explain the compiler internals. Volume 7 would explain the interpreter internals, and Volume 8 would document the algebra. These 4 volumes would contain and structure the actual source code of the system. So the current pamphlets would become chapters within these volumes. The system would be built from the books. Eventually modifying Axiom becomes a job of authoring or editing a section of one of the volumes. I have a bit of machinery already (due to David Mentre) that extends the pamphlet idea to "booklets". The basic change is that chunk names have semantics. Thus in addition to the standard random chunk name syntax: <<random chunk name>>= @ you can use a URI kind of syntax as in: <<pamphlet:foo.pamphlet>> to include a pamphlet <<file://....>> to include a file <<http://....>> to include from a web source etc. We can create our own protocols as needed. > > It reminds me also that we had talked about making it possible > to order CDrom containing installable versions of Axiom, the > source code and documentation. I think this can be done on > lulu with a bit of effort. I know that it is quite easy to > sell CDs through www.cafepress.com where we currently have > the Axiom Foundation Store (Axiom Gear). > > I wonder if there is anyone out there who would like to take > on the task to prepare such a CD? I could help but I don't > want to lead the effort. I can look into the installable CDRom issue. I've already built iso images for ISSAC. Tim _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer