[Axiom-developer] letting my mud settle

[root]

*,

when i first got the code (before it saw the light of day) i spent a
lot of time thinking about my past sins and letting my mud settle. as
a result of that navel gazing i decided that the system needed to be
completely rewritten. the task at that time was to rewrite the system
into pamphlet files. had i proposed such a massive, prevasive rewrite
this mailing list would have been aflame with opinion. and the
concensus would certainly have been to NOT do a pamphlet rewrite
or if so, use doxygen, texmacs, xml, etc.

in the process of building the system and the Makefile tree i spent
a lot of time thinking about my past sins (and suffering from them
which is poetic justice). as a result of that effort i decided that
the system needed to be completely rewritten. the task at this time
is to document it and clean it up. i need to get to the point of
being able to say 

  (compile-file "interpreter.lisp") ; actually bookvol5
  (load "interpreter")
  (compile-file "compiler.lisp")    ; actually bookvol6
  (load "compiler")
  (compile-file "browser.lisp")     ; actually bookvol7
  (load "browser")
  (compile-file "graphics.lisp")    ; actually bookvol8
  (load "graphics")
  (axiom)

at that time we'll have a crisp, clean, documented, partitioned 
system and we will be able to understand the parts. we can rewrite
them in aldor if someone steps up to it. or add new ones. for example

  (compile-file "openmath-server.lisp") ; bookvol9?
  (load "openmath-server")
  (axiom :openmath-port 1234)

we can't do that now. and we can't do it in boot. the system is too
damn complex and badly designed/written/structured. construction is
always dirty, disruptive, and time consuming. i'm sorry that you'll
get to see my ugly hacking along the way. but, hey, that's open
source programming.

i'm going to fix axiom.
i know how to get there from here. 
it takes time. 
it takes work.
it takes patience.

and once this is done there is SO much more to do.
why, the algebra restructuring alone will take years...

t