On Nov 23, 11:18 am, Simon King <simon.k...@nuigalway.ie> wrote: > Hi William! > > On 23 Nov., 18:55, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > [...] > > > Maxima started in the 1960s, whereas Singular, Pari, GAP are from the > > 1990s, right? Venerable = "accorded a great deal of respect, esp. > > because of age" > > My impression was that the word "venerable" (used *twice* in the > proposal) by itself is very old-fashioned and rather odd in a CAS > context. I would certainly not use the corresponding German word > "altehrwürdig" to refer to a computer algebra system or to an NSF- > funded winter school. To my ears, it has an ironic undertone.
I think it sounds perhaps slightly odd, but I don't catch any irony in it. I mean, we know something about the history and people involved in Maxima and Sage, as well as various discussions about Maxima vs. Sage, so it may be hard for us to read anything about both Sage and Maxima without paying very close attention to what words are being used and whether they are fraught with extra meaning. I personally don't know anything about William's experience with the Arizona Winter School beyond what he wrote in the proposal, but presumably he liked it when he was a grad student, since he helped to co-organize it recently. So I interpret the use of the word "venerable" positively in that case, and I don't think there's much ambiguity. I think it's reasonable to expect most readers (who don't have any knowledge of past Sage-Maxima discussions) to then read the second instance of the word in the same way, positively. The proposal is certainly not meant to insult or snub Maxima (or any other open-source free software) in any way. -- John -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
