Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: literate programming pamphlet filesforMathAction

[William Sit]

Dear Bill:

Thanks for taking the time to send me links to discussion on hyperdoc.
Unfortunately, 

(1) The search page produce no document:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/cgi-bin/namazu.cgi?query=hyperdoc&submit=Search%21&idxname=axiom-developer&max=10&result=normal&sort=score

Search String: hyperdoc   [How to search]

Results:
References: [ (can't open the index) ] 

No document matching your query.

Do I have to login in?

(2) I don't follow this document at all (lack of tex and unix expertise):

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2003-07/msg00068.html

So I don't think I will be able to do much in terms of contributing to this.

> I notice that in
> 
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2003-10/msg00071.html
> 
> Mike Dewar wrote:
> 
> > The only problem I can envisage is that without sman you cannot
> > use the unix graphics or browser (hyperdoc will work on its own
> > provided it doesn't need to communicate with the running Axiom
> > interpreter).  For our own TeX-based interface on Windows we
> > dispensed with sman completely and had everything running
> > smoothly through TechExplorer except for the graphics which
> > needed an external program to display (SceneViewer, an OpenGL
> > renderer which we licensed from Template Graphics Software).
> 
> Since the functionality of TechExplorer is not so different from
> what is possible under LatexWiki, Mike's comment makes me feel
> optimistic that it would be possible to implement a large part
> of hyperdoc in MathAction.

Does that mean sman is not open source? I know that hyperdoc will interact with
the interpreter when one enters the actual parameters to a constructor while
browsing in hyperdoc. In fact, sometimes the interpreter will give an error
message if the parameters are not right.

I also think that hyperdoc has a lot more functionality than TechExplorer
offers. It is true that hyperdoc does not give pretty font output (especially
math), but I'll pass over beauty for utility anytime. Formatting is a very
painstaking job and difficult to do it right (even when done manually and
interactively). It is great that you and so many others devoted so much time to
improve Open Axiom.


Regards,

William