Re: [Texmacs-dev] a plugin for Mathics ?

[David E. Miller]

Hi Bertrand:

The Mathics project you reference from the viewpoint of a quick look at the documentation of the website is very interesting and definitely has some potential for a TeXmacs plugin. This project has a way to go to reach the level of development and support of say Maxima as a computer algebra (symbolic math) system. The best part of this project is that it is based on Python which promises some interesting and powerful possibilities.

The TeXmacs Python plugin has worked well for me even when loading and using modules that should it seems should reveal obvious defects in the plugin if there are any. I have not found any so far. I have used it with SciPy, NumPy, Scientific Python, Oct2Py, matplotlib, etc. In order to use Mathics via a TeXmacs plugin the so-called console version of the executable (mathics) command will almost certainly have to be used. I recommend that you look to see first if this "executable" is merely a shell or Python script file. If so it may be possible to merely adapt the existing TeXmacs Python plugin for Mathics. You will have to see how this file gets Mathics started. If it is merely a loaded module, then it may be simply a matter of starting Mathics from the existing TeXmacs Python plugin command line prompt -- Python].

The TeXmacs Python plugin is itself essentially a Python script that waits for Python commands to be entered, which are parsed and interpreted as input, and then the Python output is parsed and tidied up for display as TeXmacs output. If Mathics turns out to be merely loaded Python module(s) with associated namespaces, then I see no reason why Mathics should not run using the Python plugin. I have used it with the Oct2Py module which is a Python interface to Octave and this works without any detectable problems.

However, keep in mind that you will not get the fancy rendering of mathematics symbols that Mathics generates using its own built-in server by way of a browser with MathJax support. The Maxima plugin somehow converts its console output to equivalent math symbols like those generated by LaTeX. I am not sure how you would do that with Mathics using the Python plugin. You might look at the Input and Output section of the Mathics documentation for the TeXForm function. This returns Mathics expressions using LaTeX-like syntax.

Good luck.

David E Miller

On 4/19/2013 5:39 PM, BB wrote:

Hello,

I recently discovered the project Mathics of  Jan Pöschko,  which could be interesting as an open-source substitute of mathematica.
Do you think it could be interesting/possible to develop a Texmacs plugin for this application ?

best,
bertrand

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