RE: [Axiom-developer] B#

[C Y]

--- Bill Page <address@hidden> wrote:

> I am very glad that you have been active in the standardization
> of C and that you are here discussing Axiom. Perhaps some day
> we will be talking about standardization of computer algebra
> languages?

A very interesting and potentially important thought.  I'm hoping Tim
would agree that the best way to approach either SPAD or more probably
Aldor as a high level language for Axiom would be to create a "literate
specification" of the language, in the tradition of ANSI specs but with
not only text but code incorporated into them.  Say, for example,
implement as much of Aldor as can be handled in Aldor itself, and have
a "bootstrapping" definition in C or Lisp, as the case may be.  I
suppose the opinion that the Axiom project can't create a whole new
compiler is correct when designing from scratch, but hopefully we can
take Aldor and create some kind of "literate specification" with it
:-).

I've been exploring along those lines with the draft ANSI Lisp
specification, seeing as it is already TeX - it's status is a tad murky
but given it has been freely downloadable for a decade and there
already exists the freely viewable hyperspec...  weaving it into a lisp
implementation would be a really interesting exercise :-).

OpenMath seems to be the closest thing out there to a universal
standard and that has problems - hmm.  An interesting problem.

CY


        
                
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