On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 2:16 AM, Martin Rubey wrote:
> Bill, since this feedback is *so* important, I forward it to
> fricas-devel. I hope you don't mind.
>
No, of course not. I intended this for the list but wasn't careful to
use reply to all.
> Bill Page writes:
>
>> I had a lot of trouble getting this to work. I thought that perhaps
>> some of the problems might have been due to a partially broken cgywin
>> installation, so I completely removed cygwin and than re-installed the
>> most recent version in "single user" mode that does not require admin
>> rights.
>
> Maybe you could detail what the problem was?
I wasn't able to use setup.exe to install fricas. fricas did not
appear as an package when I specified a package location in a cygwin
directory even though I used the Windows name for this directory. I
moved it do 'My Documents' and tried again but it still didn't work.
There were other obscure problems relating to the current path.
> Did the problems go away with the fresh installation?
>
Yes.
>> I also installed xterm and tetex. I added the following to
>> .profile
>>
>> export DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0
>
> That's very strange. I wouldn't even know what it does...
>
??? This is a standard X windows setting (also used internally in
linux). It is needed in this case so that I can access the Xming
xserver that is running natively in Windows.
>> I also have Xming installed (and running) in Windows. Then I was able
>> to start xterm and efricas. Hyperdoc opens and runs as expected (but
>> opens overtop xterm windows :-( annoying ).
>
> Yes, I find that annoying, too. But I have no way to control it.
>
>> Although I am almost ignorant of emacs commands, I was able at least
>> to execute simple FriCAS commands.
>
> Very good!
>
>> Here are a few observations:
>>
>> I don't like to see this mess when it starts:
>>
>> (1) -> ^[[?1034h(1) -> Value =
>> #<FUNCTION :LAMBDA (X &OPTIONAL ARGS) (PRINC (CODE-CHAR 27))
>> (COND
>> ((AND (EQ X '|startKeyedMsg|)
>> (MEMBER (CAR ARGS) '('S2GL0012 'S2GL0013 'S2GL0014)))
>> (PRINC "|startTypeTime|"))
>> ((AND (EQ X '|endOfKeyedMsg|)
>> (MEMBER (CAR ARGS) '('S2GL0012 'S2GL0013 'S2GL0014)))
>> (PRINC "|endOfTypeTime|"))
>> (T (PRIN1 X)))
>> (PRINC #\Newline)>
>>
>> Isn't there some way to hide this?
>
> There are two possibilities:
>
> 1) understand output redirection of emacs better. I find it is rather
> tricky to get it right, but it would make a lot of sense to improve
> it further (it is already *much* better than n previous versions). I
> should use this on several occassions: on startup, but also when
> resyncing directories.
>
Why not just ignore it the same way you ignore the banner output from FriCAS?
> 2) make fricas accept an command as command line parameter. (so I can
> tell it to output markers right from the beginning)
>
> I was too lazy to explore the first one, but it might be a goal for 1.0.7.
>
I think this is lisp-dependent. E.g. it is possible to pass an eval
parameter to GCL.
>> When I entered the command
>>
>> (3) -> )quit
>>
>> I see the message:
>>
>> Process fricas finished
>>
>> but the bottom line still says "FriCAS is working". I am not sure how
>> to recover from this state except by C-x C-c and starting again.
>
> OK, I admit, I never do this. The right way to quit efricas is to click
> on the x of the window on the top right. If you want a new fricas
> session, but you do not want to quit emacs, you have to kill the fricas
> buffer with C-x k or rename the buffer with M-x rename-uniquely and then
> start fricas again with M-x fricas. But I think it's better to just
> quit emacs.
>
> For 1.0.7, it may make sense to intercept )quit and do something
> user-friendly.
>
It is probably a common new-user mistake, but not critical.
>> I also tried to get some LaTeX output by
>>
>> )set output tex on
>
> Oh yes, this is very experimental. Oh dear, it seems that LaTeX
> rendering is on by default now. We would need to install dvipng, the
> latex package preview, and possibly some other things... (would be good
> to find out.
dvipng is installed.
> Oh, and linebreaking does not work.
>
> Well, nobody was interested so far, so I didn't work on it. This would
> actually be non-emacs related work: create a proper LaTeXForm, that
> plays nicely with breqn. (The main problem with the current tex mode is
> excessive grouping that prohibits line breaks)
>
Are you trying to use breqn? There is also a filter written in C by
Bob Sutor called 'texbreak' This would be easy to integrate and was
intended for use with Axiom output.
>> but several error messages flash by leaving
>>
>> error in process filter: Not an image: nil
>>
>> in the bottom line. After attempting another command efricas appears
>> to be hung with the message "FriCAS is working" again.
>
> Whenever this happens, M-x fricas-nocheck-eval will evaluate the current
> input without emacs paying attention to what it *thinks* it should be
> doing (it's an emergency function, that is). Try typing
>
> )se output tex on
>
> followed by pressing M-x fricas-nocheck-eval.
>
Ok, I will let you know later.
> Unfortunately, I have no way to test it right now, because I have no
> regular access to non-linux machines...
>
>> In general as you can see I do not find efricas very user friendly,
>> but it seems to work for simple things.
>
> Well, many thanks for your feedback. Especially the latex display would
> be very nice on windows, I guess. But there is some work involved...
>
>> As a windows-oriented infrequent emacs user and an infrequent cygwin
>> user, I would have been much happier if efricas had launched xemacs
>> instead of emacs.
>
> Well, fricas.el doesn't work with xemacs, I don't know why. I had never
> any luck with xemacs...
>
> What feature from xemacs are you missing? Is the menu-bar / tool-bar
> different?
>
I see some sort of menu-bar at the top of the emacs window but do not
know how to access it. As far as I can see one is expected to interact
with emacs only via the keyboard but xemacs responds to the mouse.
Maybe this is just due to my ignorance about emacs?
Regards,
Bill Page.
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