Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: Axiom Wiki FrontPage re-design

[Ralf Hemmecke]

root wrote:
> > Call me old-fashioned, but in order to edit pamphlet files, I would get 
> > the arch-sources and do something locally and then submit. Only for 
> > small changes the web-access to the sources makes sense to me. Anyway, 
> > it is not quite clear to me how modifications to the sources made over 
> > the web will eventually find their way into axiom--main. Will Tim 
> > incorporate them by hand? I guess the ChangeSet idea becomes a bit 
> > blurred here.
>
> ok. you're old-fashioned. but so am i so it's a bit of a struggle to
> think thru the idea of hacking real sources on a website. however
> bill has a good idea with this wiki site and he's managed to get
> the sources online and automatically generated.

I am not at all against Bill's work. It's great. It's just that I am 
usually offline when I find time to work on Axiom. So my main source of 
information is the pamphlet file in the source tree.

> since the website maintains a changelog/undo facility many people can
> work on their local copy (a DOYEN with a browser?) and transparently
> move to the wiki. 

> using the wiki this way for math could be VERY cool. suppose you find
> that a certain function does not compute a result. what would it take
> to click on the function and be taken to it's definition (note that 
> this requires tight cooperation with axiom since there are hundreds
> of functions with the same name but different type signatures). and
> once you've found the definition you study it for a while, write some
> comments about what failed, come back in a few days with a solution,
> type in the solution (and document it), remake axiom, go back to the
> sandbox and test it. if it works you "promote" it to the reviewers
> for inclusion into the "approved" source tree. 

Oh, there exists an "approved" tree. After reading a bit in the 
documentation of GNU arch, I was always wondering whether there still is 
ONE tree that should somehow be considered as the ORIGINAL or APPROVED. 
I guess, Tim, maintains that archive.

> each user could have their own branch of axiom.

Fine for me.

> of course, this will cause major "mainline" headaches for the "approved"
> source tree but that's hardly the experimenter's problem. 

Good to get these top-level ideas transmitted.

But I somehow would like to see a bit more plans. Of course anyone could 
do anything, but without some kind of given direction much work could be 
in vain. So I'd like to discuss before I program.

Ralf