I agree that the limitation on the length of the abbreviation
itself was constrained by the old file names. But there are
many cases where standard short name is quite convenient -
especially for use by expert users in the Axiom interpreter.
For example I often write: 'POLY INT' instead of
'Polynomial Integer' (and I am sure I could think of more
extreme cases where the abbreviations are useful).
Well, I agree that some standard is not that bad. However, I mostly
prefer to use no abbreviation. And if I do in my code I (probably) also
provide the explicit macros I use.
Well, I don't yet have a very good argument against abbreviations,
except that on a mailing list not all people immediately understand what
for example, FAXF or FEXPR stand for.
Besides being a shortcut, one reason that Axiom needs abbreviations
is in order to construct the internal (lisp) mangled name of the
functions exported by the domain. See for example the lisp code
in the following example:
http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/SandBoxNNI
I think this name mangling is essential to the way Axiom performs
function selection and calling.
Do you mean
; (DEFUN |NNI2;shift;$I$;2| ...) is being compiled.
I don't care much about internal names that I will never see, but I
guess the name could also be generated as
|NonNegativeInteger2;shift;$I$;2| without any further trouble as long as
any compilation follows the "full-name-priciple".
I'll be quiet about )abbrev. It's not my main concern for now.
Ralf
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