Maybe some work to make Maxima display much better

--- "Andrey G. Grozin" <A.G.Grozin@inp.nsk.su> wrote:
> Hello *,
> 
> I quite disagree. Maxima language has a well-defined *mathematical*
> semantics, but no *typesetting* semantics. LaTeX has a well-defined
> typesetting semantics, and no mathematical semantics. MathML has
> typesetting semantics, and a little bit of mathematical semantics.
> If somebody would like to use Maxima as a typesetting language, it
> will have to be enhanced by a lot of markup stuff. Why create a new 
> LaTeX, when LaTeX works so wonderfully?

I'm confused.  What are we arguing about here?  Maxima already has the
ability to export to LaTeX syntax, and presumably that ability could be
extended to other formats.  Whatever display we use, can't we just do
internally whatever is most convenient for display purposes, depending
on the interface?

> > Maybe even a postscript interpreter.
> The answer is: Display GhostScript. GhostScript is an excellent
> PostScript interpreter; Display GhostScript incorporates Display 
> enhancements, which were designed by NeXT in order to make PostScript

> viable as a means of communication between applications and display.

I'm not really familiar with this solution - how would that work on
various platforms?  The only Display Ghostscript I am aware of is
http://www.gyve.org/dgs/ which has not been developed, apparently,
since 2000, is not finished yet and is part of the GNUStep project. Can
this provide an interactive interface?  What would be a good place to
start learning about this?

While were at it, Richard, I noticed in "A Review of Macsyma" you
mentioned some sort of interface that had been developed at Berkeley
provided  "a menu-based command structure on top of
typset-display-based local version of Macsyma", and MIT had somehow
prevented the sharing of the code among users.  Is that interface still
around?  Would it be of any use in the current problem?

CY

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