[Axiom-developer] RE: optional argument to aldor environment

[Martin Rubey]

Page, Bill writes:

 > > I'm quite certain we should reserve the optional argument to allow for
 > > specifying the version/patch number of the CAS in question, in line with
 > > my feature request
 > > 
 > > http://page.axiom-developer.org/zope/mathaction/44IssueTracker
 > NeedsToBeAbleToUseOldAxiomVersions
 > >
 > 
 > As I explained earlier, because of the design of MathAction it would be
 > quite awkward to mix different versions of the same external program on the
 > same page. MathAction would have to make a separate pass over the contents
 > of the page for each version of each external program. I think that could
 > soon become to prohibitive in terms of the time required to parse and save a
 > page.

Since you are the master of MathAction, I believe you, although I don't quite
understand. Did I understand correctly: Currently you save the content of every
section into a file and then you say something like

axiom                (start axiom)
for file in filelist
  case type(file) of
    axiom: )re file
     spad: )co file
    aldor: )co file
)qu

So maybe the following could be a solution: have a LaTeX-syntax-wiki-switch
like

\setAxiomVersion{patchnumber}

and

\setAxiomVersionCurrent

that quits the current axiom process and starts a new one with the indicated
pachnumber. Furthermore, these commands should print the indicated
patchnumber... So this would result in the following structure

for version in versionlist
  axiom--version       (start axiom)
  for file in filelist
    case type(file) of
      axiom: )re file
       spad: )co file
      aldor: )co file
  )qu

Would this be doable?

 > A better idea, I think, would perhaps be to introduce a paramter associated
 > with the whole page - similar to the way the pagetype is specified now.

Well, the idea is that I can write on IssueTracker

Up to Axiom version
\setAxiomVersion{44}

the following produced wrong output:
\begin{axiom}
  code formerly producing wrong output
\end{axiom}

However, meanwhile this is fixed, as you can see for example in the current
version 
\setAxiomVersionCurrent

\begin{axiom}
  code formerly producing wrong output
\end{axiom}

Martin