On 9/3/07, Stephen Watt wrote: > On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 11:22:31PM -0400, Bill Page wrote: > > ... > > Are you aware that currently Aldor works within Axiom by compiling to > > Lisp? How do you see FOAM being involved? Could you expand a little on > > this comment? > > In case it is not clear: FOAM is the compilation target for Aldor, and this > is used to generate low-level Lisp. >
Yes, I think that is clear. I wanted to understand how FOAM could be used in Axiom as implied by Gaby's email. > FOAM is designed to have only operations that are efficient both in Lisp > and in a machine code-only environment. (So, for example, there is no way > to take an address of something.) > As an abstraction layer this makes very good sense. I believe that Aldor also provides an interpreter for this layer: "-gloop", right? But it is not clear to me how Axiom could make use of this. On 9/3/07, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote: > On Mon, 3 Sep 2007, Bill Page wrote: > > | > I would like, first, to improve inter-operability with Aldor libraries > | > from within Axiom (and vice versa) through ISA like FOAM. > | > > | > | Sorry, what is "ISA"? > > "Instruction Set Architecture". This is in reference to my goal to > have a well defined Axiom Virtual Machine that is not tied to Lisp. > As I understand it, this was also the goal of the specification of FOAM for Aldor. > | Are you aware that currently Aldor works within Axiom by compiling to > | Lisp? > > Yes. But, eventually, I want to move away from Lisp. > I agree with that - or perhaps at least I agree that it is desirable to identify a specific subset of Lisp that is required to support Axiom and it's current algebra library. I am thinking here for example about CCL as used in the last commercial release of Axiom. > | How do you see FOAM being involved? > > I would like to see more documentation of FOAM and its semantics -- I > know there is a documentation; but I'm not sure how current it is and > whether it provides me with all I need. I briefly discussed the > documentation issue with Stephen when I was in London last July. > What do you need to investigate this issue more deeply? Are you willing to devote some time to reviewing and expanding the FOAM documentation? Regards, Bill Page. _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
