Re: [Texmacs-dev] Re: TeXmacs interface to OpenAxiom

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 03:35:46AM -0500, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> > I did a little testing.  First I did 'apt-get install texmacs' on my
> > Debian 5.0 system where I have all three of Axiom, OpenAxiom and
> > FriCAS installed. Starting texmacs I tried to 'Insert/Session" but I
> > noticed that the 'Axiom" option was not present.  So I did a little
> > digging and found that the tm_init script is looking for a specific
> > file named '/usr/bin/axiom'. I created a symbolic link from
> > /usr/bin/axiom -> /usr/local/bin/open-axiom and then I was apparently
> > able to start an "Axiom" session but I got symptoms very similar to
> > what you described - except worse. I had to enter something 5 or 6
> > times before it produced any output and then sometimes it still did
> > not work.
> 
> I build and installed TeXmacs from the sVN source.  Curiously, I would not
> find trace of the 'tm_init' program in the destination (for me, it is
> /usr/local) by a recursive `find'. Joris, is that program supposed to be
> installed through special incantation?

No, there is no such program in TeXmacs. This is probably something
someone wrote for the Axiom side.

> I think looking for the hard path "/usr/bin/axiom" is a mistake.  That should 
> be
> looked for only if a relative serach from PATH fails.  Once, I understand
> the intricacies of the plugins (yes. I've read the doc), I'll contribute code
> for looking for OpenAxiom.  But, right now, it looks as if half of the TeXmacs
> helper programs were never installed when I issued `make install'.

TeXmacs has no special logic to search for plug-ins (except testing
whether a file exists or whether a file exists in a path, such as $PATH).
It is the responsability of the plug-in to find the corresponding program,
if it is installed. For most plug-ins (see the other plug-ins) it indeed
suffices to check whether the program is in the path.

Notice that this point may also require special treatment on Windows.

> > Instead of starting texmacs to test, you can run tm_axiom filter
> > directly like this:
> >
> >   /usr/lib/texmacs/TeXmacs/bin/tm_axiom

For debugging, you can also launch TeXmacs using

        texmacs --debug-io

Best wishes, --Joris