Re: [Axiom-developer] Literated VMLISP.LISP.PAMPHLET

[Ralf Hemmecke]

> > Hmmm, I am not sure I can support that approach. For two reasons.
> >
> > 1) Most probably the aliases come in the documentation without links
> > to the code they refer to. (Though that can be done.)
> I'm not quite sure what exactly you're getting at.

Have you, for example ever used

@ %def foo

at the end of a code chunk? noweave can generated hyperlinks inside the 
code pieces from that...

> > 2) You separate code that belongs together. Don't you think?
> I suppose you mean that an alias definition should be next to the
> definition of the function that it's an alias for? Like
>
> <<foo>>=
>
> (defun foo (...)
>   ...)
>
> (define-function alias-for-foo #'foo)
> @
>
> That's what I thought at first, but then it occured to me that
>
> 1) Aliases in general aren't terribly useful. The only exception I can
>    think of is the following. Suppose you have an operation acting on
>    objects of type FOO, say COMPARE-FOOS. Now it happens that the
>    definition of that function is
>
>      (defun compare-foos (&rest foos)
>        (apply #'equal foos))
>
>    In this case it is acceptable to create COMPARE-FOOS, because it
>    captures a different concept. This is also useful if you later
>    change the implementation of objects of type FOO, and you can't
>    just compare them with EQUAL. In that case you simply change the
>    implementation of COMPARE-FOOS. If you'd use EQUAL directly, you'd
>    have to check each and every EQUAL in your source to figure out
>    wether it has to be adapted to the new implementation of FOOs.
>
>    Other than that I don't see any justification for aliases.

I cannot say much about that. I am not a LISP programmer. :-(

[snip]

> > Why would it make sense to list all the abbreviations on one section
> > (even without documenation)?
> Because they're all obsolete. That section is a list of things to
> remove.

Hmmm, in that case, the section would not be forever. So I am with you.

> > > Thanks for taking the time to discuss - admittedly boring - details.
> > I don't think that it is "boring". I am sure that most of us have no
> > real experience what the best LP style in Axiom would be. Otherwise I
> > would have seen a "Conventions" page that explains how to write good
> > literate programs. It's not totally clear, at least not for me.
> Not to me, either. When I read your first response to my VMLISP.LISP
> conversion I actually thought about that. I was going to suggest that
> you put up the example you gave (the Groebner basis fragment).

All I can put onto the net is already there. My experience of 
programming in LP style is at the ALLPROSE website. I am sure that I am 
not perfect, but the whole thing is a bit bigger than just dhmatrix.

And I am currently doing something here...

svn co svn://svn.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/hemmecke/combinat/trunk combinat
cd combinat/combinat
make colored dvi

in a similar style. But all that is not LISP, but you might get an idea 
how I think Axiom should look like.

Ralf