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>From: "S.H.M.J. Houben" <houben at natlab>
>To: maxima@www.ma.utexas.edu
>Subject: RE: future of Maxima
>Date: Mon, Sep 24, 2001, 5:42 AM
>
> 2. About GUI support
>
> The current xmaxima talks over a pipe to the real maxima.
> Doing the GUI
> directly from Lisp would be more elegant; unfortunately, there
> is no such thing as a standard GUI interface for Lisp.
> So I think that the pipe idea is still the best idea:
>
> 1. The Lisp code remains portable
> 2. Emacs people can still use it
> 3. The GUI can be implemented in an arbitrary programming language.
>
> Note that Mathematica also has the kernel in a separate process,
> so this is apparently not an impediment for popularity.
That's nice, since XEmacs is already available for Mac OS X.
But I'd like to implement Maxima using Cocoa:
For Mac OS X (or Darwin), as far as I know there's no Tcl/Tk implementation.
It's true that I could use Cocoa to wrap a Maxima session under my own
designed GUI, but features like plotting in Cocoa uses NSBezierPath and
specific methods (kind of C functions) etc. So, it would be desirable if I
could understand the code itself.
My knowledge of LISP is ZERO and it would be great if you could give me an
overview of the code and point me to some links.
Notice that the dislay of 2D formulas and palettes could be implemented
quite easily. Also, an integrated Help using the "Help Center".
Thanks in advance,
Lizardo H. C. M. Nunes
...But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the
Greeks foolishness;(...)but God has chosen the foolish things of the world
to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to
confound the things which are strong;(I Cor.1:23&27)