Re: [Axiom-developer] (Possible) reasons Axiom didn't appeal to SoC coders...

[Bill Page]

Quoting C Y :

> --- Bill Page wrote:
>
> > If by "parent program" you mean "sman" and "session"? Since these are
> > C programs there is no good reason not be able to compile them under
> > either cygwin or MSYS/MinGW (native windows). The trick is to get the
> > right support for sockets.  On the other hand, 'hyperdoc' and
> > 'graphics' both require X-windows. This is something that (as far
> > as I know) is only available under cygwin.
>
> There are X servers for Windows other than cygwin but I believe they
> are all commercial - nor do I know if we could successfully work with
> them.

No. I meant X-windows *client* support, i.e. the X libraries and associated
machinery. Both hyperdoc and graphics require this X-windows client
support.

The X server component is no problem. A good free X server is provided
by Xming on Windows:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming

I would not recommend running the X server component under cygwin.
I've tried it and I think it sucks. If you really want this, then I think you
really want Linux.

>  The correct approach here is to work with some cross platform
> toolkit and avoid the need for an X server, but that will take time

I am not convinced that this is the correct approach. It works for
some, e.g. GIMP, but it still looks ugly to me. I am much more
in favor of the web-browser-as-gui solution for cross platform
support. But both of these are too much work for the resources
we have available right now.

> :-(.  Socket support on Windows should be possible - IIRC
> Maxima makes use of this.

Certainly GCL supports sockets on Windows. No problem. But
Axiom rolls it's own socket support, so linking it into GCL on
Windows is a little technically challenging (but not too difficult,
I think). But probably it would be better to modify AXIOM to use
the socket support built in to Lisp (GCL).

> ...

Regards,
Bill Page.