Re: Why Maxima is in Lisp/ if you want to rewrite, here are some projects

--- Richard Fateman  wrote:
> Writing an alternative front end for Maxima is a
> tricky business.Indeed...
> Symmax or Schelter's Xmaxima  or .... These are
> experiments in user interfaces, and regardless of the
> programming skill of the implementor, can be good or
> bad designs.  One possibility is to take an existing
> successful interface and slavishly copy it.  There are
> several models. Symmax, or at least one version of it
> seemed to copy Mathcad. I personally don't care for
> that, but tastes vary. Mathematica, Maple, and the
> commercial Macsyma are similar in many respects.They are, and I think that
> may be one of the things to recommend that style of interface, if it can
> be managed - the less of a learning curve for people with previous training,
> the more willing they will be to look at Maxima.
> I like the traditional script-based interaction,
> especially since I can use emacs to manage the
> script. This is probably old-fashioned.I wouldn't say old-fashioned - I think
> that's a trait of true power users.  There are relatively few such users,
> but my guess is that they would all share that opinion.
> To the extent that the fancy interface makes this
> impossible, I find myself uncomfortable. What would you say are the ways current
> interfaces on other programs limit that type of work?  It would be nice to have
> our cake and eat it too, so to speak.
> Even to the extent of managing a
> script in emacs and then "batch" loading it into the
> computer algebra system.
>
> If you write a GUI, there are ways of doing so IN
> lisp, but I think you have trouble with portability.Is that how xemacs does it's GUI?
> I must confess I didn't have much luck trying to figure out the Lisp GUI game.
> See what Schelter did:  he used something like Tcl/TK
> which is implemented on several platforms, and then
> linked to lisp in another process.Is that ability specific to Tcl/Tk or
> can that be done with other toolkits?
> This is not optimal on any specific platform, but it
> is pretty good for portability.Given how fast most modern computers are,
> I suspect we can afford to give up a little efficiency in the communication
> between the front and back end, as long as the result isn't visible to the user.
> As to portability, I like the looks of the WxWindows toolkit - it has Linux and
> Windows versions and I believe there is even a port to the Mac underway.
> Unfortunately, I believe it is a C++ library - does that squash the
> chances of maxima talking to it?
> PS. You could also look at other packages:  Matlab
> comes to
> mind (or its free clone), could be added to Maxima.I think that's Octave?
> I've often wondered if a merger of that project and Maxima would be a good
> idea - they seem to have done well with the numerical end of things.
> Also, does anyone know anything about the plplot library?
> In my experience, at least, the current plotting routine seems a bit slow
> under Linux (it does OK on Windows) and plplot seems to handle a lot of
> the same types of operations.  I guess I have one or two immediate
> suggestions - find the guy who has the maxima site on sourceforge (there is
> one already and has been for quite a while at http://sourceforge.net/projects/maxima,
> I just don't know who runs it or if they're even still active - if it isn't
> we need to either figure out what to call the sourceforge project (GNUmaxima?)
> or somehow kick some life into the current site) and transfer operations there,
> and maybe start a wishlist so we know what directions we want to take maxima.
> I'll try emailing the guy who has the current site and see if he responds.

CY