On Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:16 AM Camm Maguire wrote: > Hi Tim! Great conference!
I second that! > Here's my take home understanding of the remaining issues > re: gcl/axiom: > > 1) reenable run-process > 2) display images in tcl/tk > 3) tcl/tk working in windows > 4) Windows socket workaround for sman/hypertex/graphics This is consistent with my recollection of our discussions during the Axiom sprint session. And I am willing to help with testing and debugging on the Windows platform. But we should be clear I think, that this is not necessarily the shortest path to a fully functioning version of Axiom on Windows. The linux version of Axiom does not now use tcl/tk for Graphics and Hypertex, i.e. those parts of Axiom that are not already ported to Microsoft Windows. Instead these currently depend directly on the X windows libraries. These should perhaps be re-implemented in tcl/tk linux first before attempting the port to Windows. Because of this X windows dependency the shortest path, though admittedly not necessarily the best path, for fully implementing Axiom on Windows would probably be to use Cygwin. Currently GCL on windows uses MinGW instead of Cygwin to compile to native Windows but unlike Cygwin MinGW does not provided an X windows compatible environment. I think using native Windows applications on Windows is a wothwhile target but it is sometimes hard for applications that originate on linux/Unix. In principle it is possible to continue to compile AXIOMsys as a native Windows application and to run the Hypertex and Graphics components of Axiom under Cygwin. This would make it unnecessary to convert any already working code to tcl/tk. As I understand it, these additional components of Axiom currently only require a Unix-compatible C programming environment. So all we would need for this alternative is step 4) above - socket compatibility between the current native Windows version of GCL and the additional C code compiled under Cygwin. Of course there are drawbacks. Using *both* MSYS/MinGW and Cygwin under Windows would further complicate the Windows build environment for Axiom. Currently there is no Cygwin version of GCL. Further, the X windows user interface under Cygwin might seem a little awkward for some Microsoft Windows users. But it should still be possible to prepare an auto-installation binary distribution that would make much of this transparent for users who are not interested in building Axiom from source. > > These might go into a quick 2.6.7 GCL release. However perhaps there are other reasons which would also motivate the development of GCL tcl/tk on Microsoft Windows. > > 5) axiom configure script > Yes! I think that would be a great step forward. I think Axiom should conform more closely to the de facto norm for building open source software. > There are a few math bugs in addition for which I'd like > to propose fixes and test. Should I make a tla branch? > If so, what should it be called? I don't think a special tla branch would be necessary unless you contemplate drastic changes to Axiom's algebra. (I think there is already a tla branch for that purpose. See http://page.axiom-developer.org/zope/mathaction/ArchUsage ) If you are just testing and proposing fixes you can do that on a local copy of Axiom and then post them to IssueTracker on www.axiom-developer.org This would allow other people to test them and then they could be incorporated into the main distribution. Regards, Bill Page. _______________________________________________ Gcl-devel mailing list Gcl-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gcl-devel
