[Axiom-developer] RE: Handling of autoload messages in TeXmacs

[Bill Page]

David,

I am sorry that I did not take the time last night to
provide a complete working patch, I just keyed those
commands from memory. But there is a little more that
needs to be done to synchronize axiom's output with the
texmacs interface. I have attached a full patch file
from diff -Naur which includes both your and my changes
to the tm_axiom.c file. This sets the default for the
autoload messages to off just as it was for the older
"commercial" version of Axiom. It also fixes the -Wall
warnings.

I don't see any problem (in principle) with sending
Loading ... messages to stderr. These are essentially
"debugging" messages. It is common practice that they
should go to stderr. I think it might help to "tidy-up"
the output of the Axiom build output if stderr output
were not included unless some option was specified. But
this is not so important.

In the commercial version of Axiom these messages were
not displayed by default. But in this "developer" version
of Axiom, maybe it makes sense that the default should be
to display them. In any case the display can be control
by the )set messages command.

If I get time, I will see if I can understand Axiom's tex
output generation code enough to change it so that all
Loading... messages preceed any tex output. I agree that
this would probably be the best option. And as you note,
there may be other things we may want to change to bring
the generated tex up to modern "standards".

Cheers,
Bill Page.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Mentré [mailto:address@hidden 
> Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2003 4:57 AM
> To: Bill Page
> Cc: address@hidden; address@hidden
> Subject: Handling of autoload messages in TeXmacs (was: Re: 
> [Axiom-developer] Current status on TeXmacs for Axiom?)
> 
> 
> Bill Page <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Maybe the patch to tm_axiom.c should also include this 
> command in the 
> > startup phase
> >
> > --------
> >    /* force-feeding */
> > +  fputs(")set messages autoload off\n",axin); fflush(axin); #ifdef 
> > +LOG
> > +  fputs("SENT )set messages autoload off\n",log); 
> fflush(log); #endif
> >    fputs(")set messages prompt plain\n",axin); fflush(axin);
> > --------
> 
> I tried this but it does not work. The Axiom prompt never 
> appears in TeXmacs. By putting the ")set messages autoload 
> off" later (after ")set output algebra off"), it partially 
> works. One need to type two <return> to obtain Axiom result.
> 
> > Looking more closely, it seems that Axiom sometimes embeds the 
> > autoload messages in the output stream in what seems a 
> strange order.
> 
> Would it be possible to delay the autoload message before or 
> after the output stream?
> 
> > It is not yet clear to me at this time how to get TeXmacs to handle 
> > such messages properly in all cases (look for "Loading ..." 
> embedded 
> > in the tex?), or whether perhaps a change can be /should be made to 
> > axiom to avoid generating these messages inside the tex $$ ... $$ 
> > section.
> 
> I think it would be the best solution: outside $$ ... $$.
> 
> I've not look at Axiom internals but maybe is it possible to 
> use two buffers to prepare Axiom output?
> 
> 
> > Maybe the Loading ... messages should be sent to stderr rather than 
> > stdout?
> 
> This approach would raise other issues. It would complicate 
> the build process if you want all messages output by Axiom. 
> 
> Moreover, it might be necessary to have autoload messages 
> (and other information messages) under TeXmacs if it becomes 
> the default Axiom user interface. The more I think about it, 
> the more I think we should keep Axiom output as much 
> unaltered as possible: keep all Axiom prompt, just remove 
> prompt number and typeset mathematical output.
> 
> 
> By the way, I also noticed that there is some display 
> glitches in TeXmacs with following command:
> 
>   integrate(x**(1/3),x)
> 
> I have asked on texmacs-dev on the best way to fix this issue.
> 
> 
> Yours,
> d.
> -- 
>  address@hidden
>

tm_axiom.patch
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