[Axiom-developer] [AxiomDownload] Large Download

[unknown]

Changes http://www.axiom-developer.org/zope/mathaction/AxiomDownload/diff
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Tim wrote:
There is no logical breakdown of Axiom that would allow this without having a 
very axiom-educated user doing the download.

The only parts that could be broken out this way would be the documentation and 
portions of the algebra. But, currently, installing new algebra requires a lot 
of knowledge, some of which will be contained in the documentation.

What problem are you really trying to solve? Are the download times too long? 
Is your connection unreliable?

Tim
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Yes download times are really too long. I takes me several days to download 
axiom (on a slow dial-up connection).  I use kget to download and that is 
pretty reliable( I can pause and resume and that has worked for me for perhaps 
all the softwre I have downloaded till now). However, I had to build axiom from 
sources as my Linux is not directly supported here. So after downloading, I 
have to wait for another 2 hours to get a running axiom (actually, it is more 
than that because Axiom is not always(oftenn)n) successfully build. Last time I 
(sept sources) I could not get the gcl 7 working 'out of the box'. I had do 
some modifications and got it working somehow on the preinstalled gcl 
6.something. Even with the earlier sources, when I issued make install, the 
system was copied onto /usr/share/axiom (I don't remember where)  but the links 
that the program used internally to call utilities distributed pointed to the 
location where I had built axiom. That is too much of work and is !
horrible for a new user--another reason for the less popularity of axiom.

After downloading axiom, a new user, say, would not find axiom as easy to use. 
Axiom is much larger to download than maxima(Of course I feell it is better), 
to cite an example and is not easy to get it up. 

My suggestion is ( I don't know if that is possible) to take some idea from a 
web browser: distribute a very basic version of axiom as a core package and let 
the users download other portions of the package when the need may be. What 
does firefox do if it encounters a flash object? It  informs the user that it 
is not able to display the content, checks its servers with the user's 
permission if some plugin is available, downloads, configurers and installs it 
without the user playing an active part and displays the content. Can we not 
follow the same model here? So that a possible user downloads 'plugins'  to the 
core axiom system?  When a user issues a plot command, the core checks whether 
the package is available locally or not, if not whether that is a valid command 
and if is, download, configure, build  and install the package.
On windows, that could simply be a matter of copying a dll from the server to 
its directory, perhaps?

I earnestly appreciate the efforts that everyone here has put to help axiom get 
better and I wish it would be the best system and outperform any commercial 
system available, it is a long road to follow to reach the destination.



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