On Wednesday, July 26, 2006 11:15 PM Gaby wrote: > ... > Tim Daly wrote: > | > | Well, as long as we're talking about changing the input > | language so that it is type-free, one thing to consider > | would be to mimic the Maple language. That would give us > | a large test suite of programs and examples. It also might > | be fairly enlightening about the issues, both for us and > | for Maple.
I have been and continue to be a long term frequent user and beta tester of new versions of Maple. I don't see much point in mimicing the "Maple language" as an Axiom interface - at least not from the point of view of the significant features of Axiom. In fact my dissatifaction with Maple as a formal mathematical environment and with the direction taken by the MapleSoft developers a few years ago lead directly to my current interest (dare I say fascination) in Axiom and Aldor. > > I consider Maple language to be cripled, grown barnacle > over the year. With hindsight, we must be very careful. I agree strongly with Gaby about this. I think we have to be very careful. I know that Steven Watt and his research group are quite actively involved with Maple developers and have implemented several different interfaces of the kind that Tim is suggesting. See for example: A Framework for Using Aldor Libraries with Maple. Cosmin Oancea, Stephen M. Watt. www.csd.uwo.ca/~watt/pub/reprints/2004-eaca-mapal.pdf Since Maple remains a properitary system in more or less direct competition with Axiom in spite of the fact that Axiom is now open source, I think this connection between Aldor and Maple is potentially in conflict with Aldor becoming open source and available for full integration with the Axiom open source distribution. Two thing might dissuade me from this negative opinion: One is if Maple should move much more strongly towards making Maple open source then in has in the last few years (admittedly there has been *some* progress). The second is if MapleSoft would agree to become an official corporate sponsor of the Axiom project. (Don't scoff!) Seriously I don't see any reason why MapleSoft and even Mathematica might not want to do this - afterall what do they have to lose by doing this? And how many promises of the good will of mathematical researchers would it like buy for them? Anyway, although a Maple or Mathematica-style input language might have some initial appeal to users attempting to migrate from one of these other environments to Axiom, I think that in the long run this path for new users to Axiom is not likely to be a very effective one for Axiom because it too strongly de-emphasises the fundamental design distinctions between Axiom and these other systems. In fact it could be very misleading for new users to be introduced to Axiom this way. > I thought that B-natural was considerd to be the typeless > language of choice for Axiom? > I think I would prefeer to describe B-natural as a singly- typed language rather than a typeless language because of the way it must interface with the very complex Axiom type system. Form my point of view, as a candidate for a new user input language for Axiom, B-natural remains the most "natural" choice. :) Regards, bill Page. _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
