[Axiom-developer] Axiom under Windows

[daly]

Alasdair,

> ... Since windows is, for better or worse, the predominant desktop OS
> currently, with no change likely in the foreseeable future, I would
> have thought that to make Axiom more popular, a native interface 
> is required.

While I have the expertise to do this I have neither the time nor the
native toolchain (e.g. a native windows compiler, debugger, etc), all
of which cost actual cash. In the short term perhaps someone could look
at using the WxMaxima tools.

In the last couple weeks I posted some links to a native Hyperdoc.
But without the sman controller it cannot talk to Axiom and I did
not complete that part of the port. Gaby and Waldek have certainly
done a lot of work in this direction and can probably do the port.

I'm working on a branch that will replace the current user interface
with a standard browser, on a long term path toward the "crystal"
(see the mailing list history). This involves new code rather than
a port of the old code and should be more robust and portable in the
long run. The tools to do this are slowly becoming available. Some,
such as the <canvas> tag are there but not fully supported yet.

Porting is certainly a worthwhile project but it is one among many. At
this point I feel that fundamentals have priority, such as deep
documentation, correctness, clean code, a good theory behind interpreter
coercions, a review of the algebra hierarchy to align it more strongly
with theory, etc.  That's just my opinion and is not universal in the
group. This is, of course, free and open source software so code counts 
much more than opinions.

As for the "foreseeable future" I'd have to say that the 30-year
horizon (the project horizon) gives a lot of room for change. :-)

Tim