Re: [Axiom-developer] foreign concepts

[Martin Rubey]

Dear Bill,

first of all: you are doing a wonderful job.

second: I also thought about advertising axiom, BUT, from some experience I had
with close collegs, I am absolutely sure that the following things should be
done before:

* The known math-bugs should be corrected or at least workarounds provided.

  We are in pretty good shape here. From those bugs I *know*, the following two
  are the only ones I'd consider serious: #9217 and #10530. However, there are
  workarounds for both, so I wouldn't consider them as a show stopper.

* editing pamphlets via MathAction should work.

  It seems that we are in good shape here, too. (I think this is a great
  feature)

* Aldor should work as compiler for Axiom

  Rationale: We could attract (and join) the Aldor community here. Furthermore,
  I think that people would gain confidence, since Aldor is probably considered
  more stable than spad.

  Camm, if you are reading this, maybe you can help?

* Windows port.

  Don't know anything about this.

I think we could advertise in the following communities:

* Math and Computeralgebra (via PlanetMath, newsgroups, special math portals I
  don't know by heart, groups like the RISC in Linz)

* Lisp (a CMUCL/SBCL port would be nice. I think some work has been done here
  already)

* LateX and TeXmacs (why not. MathAction and the pamphlet project is related to
  LaTeX)

* emacs. Yes, I think we should make as much noise as possible.

* MuPAD-combinat. Ask them for cooperation, I know that some of them are
  interested.

* Maxima

 > More broadly speaking, I think the Axiom project as a whole
 > could use more PR. I think there are some quickly evolving
 > ways to do this on the Internet ranging from being mentioned
 > in popular blogs to an article in a part-paper / part-electronic
 > trade magazine. But someone has to step up to the task of
 > preparing the equivalent of "press notices" etc. We might
 > worry that "we are not ready yet" for such publication, but
 > on the other hand one of the reasons we are not ready yet
 > could well be *because* of the lack of publication.
 > 
 > One of the reasons for my reacting quickly to the possibility
 > of adding Reduce to MathAction was the thought that sharing
 > the available audience might be beneficial to both. Of course,
 > as we say on the FrontPage of MathAction this potentially
 > extends to other computer algebra systems as well. I have
 > not seen many comments pro or con about this strategy.

I think it was *very* clever. I think it would be clever to add Maxima, too,
But one thing after the other.

Thanks again,

Martin