[Axiom-developer] history

[Tim Daly]

William,

When I put patches in any file the technique used is to clip out the
old code, replace it with a chunk name, and insert the new code from
the chunk. Thus,

IF THE CODE READ:

   first line of code
   buggy line of code
   third line of code

UPON RECEIVING A PATCH TO THE BUGGY LINE SUCH AS:
==========================================================
Tim,

   buggy line of code

should be replaced by

   fixed line of code
because the buggy line of code is bad. the reason is that
it will compute the wrong answer. For instance, given this
   axiom input example
we get this output
   axiom buggy output
but it should read
   axiom fixed output
and this change fixes it.

============================================================
THE NEW FILE WOULD READ:

\section{fixed line of code change}
The code used to read:
\begin{verbatim}
   buggy line of code
\end{verbatim}
because the buggy line of code is bad. the reason is that
it will compute the wrong answer. For instance, given this
   axiom input example
we get this output
   axiom buggy output
but it should read
   axiom fixed output
and this change fixes it.

<<fixedline>>=
   fixed line of code
@

........

   first line of code
<<fixedline>>   
   third line of code


=================================================================

so you can see that the chunking/latex technology allows me to
document what was changed and why it was changed. So far I haven't
really gotten direct patch requests for anything although there
has been much debate on the list. I'm following the debate but
unless somebody sends me an explicit patch no change takes place.
I could jump in and code a random patch in the middle of the 
discussion but there are many different opinions (witness the
0^0 debate) which I'm not qualified to judge. I'm hoping that
once the dust settles someone will code up an agreed-upon patch
and send it to me. 

Tim