Subject: Maxima servermode: stability of commands....
From: Michele Slocovich
Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 23:57:44 +0200
No, I hadn't heard about WIMS. I will analyse it shortly, when the exam
period will be over (soon I hope!).
The project I've written a maxima "proxy" for is STACK:
http://mantis.york.ac.uk/moodle/course/view.php?id=21
(which I've not written myself!). For a demo server showing off some
features: http://stack.bham.ac.uk/
Thanks
Michele
On 5/2/06, Nicolas Pettiaux <nicolas.pettiaux at ael.be> wrote:
>
> 2006/5/2, Michele Slocovich <msloco at gmail.com>:
>
> It looks to me that your are writing s software that looks very similar to
> WIMS.
>
> Am I right ? Did you know about wims ? If not, I hope this can help
> you. If yes, can you please tell us what is different in your project
> and what you did not liked in wims ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nicolas
>
> [1] WIMS http://wims.unice.fr/wims/ This is the main site of WIMS (WWW
> Interactive Mathematics Server): interactive exercises, online
> calculators and plotters, mathematical recreation ... Wims uses Maxima
> as a back-end (as well as many other tools)
>
> > Hello list,
> >
> > I've been experimenting and using maxima as a backend for an assessmen=
t
> > system for mathematicks.
> > The system is called STACK, you might have already heard of it:
> > http://mantis.york.ac.uk/moodle/course/view.php?id=21
> >
> > It is open source. It uses maxima as a backend for veryfing students'
> > answers to questionnaires.
> > It should also be able to act as an RQP (remote question protocol)
> server
> > for other elearning systems (moodle for instance).
> >
> > I've been working on how this software calls maxima itself.
> > Originally STACK would launch a single maxima instance for every
> operation
> > (slooow and possibly congesting when... say 20 pupils trying a
> > questionnnaire!).
> > I've written some code to launch maxima in servermode (-s port) and to
> act
> > as a proxy/multiplexer for evaluation calls from STACK.
> > Apart from the fact that "servermode" is not a correct definition,
> since
> > maxima acts, tcp wise, as a client, but let's leave this with
> documentation
> > problems,
> > I would like to inquiry about the stability of the command interface
> for
> > maxima.
> >
> > The problem is that the code developed for 5.9.1 didn't work for 5.9.2,
> > mostly due to smallcaps issues.
> > Now 5.9.3 seems not to work with the STACK code written for 5.9.2.
> >
> > Maybe the approach i'm following is not the right one, maybe there is
> some
> > API i can call ? Can anyone of you devise a better strategy ?
> >
> > On the other side, does anyone know what could have changed in the
> maxima
> > calls to make them fail ?
> >
> > the typical "call" STACK does to maxima (just to give you an idea) is:
> >
> > cab:block([ RANDOM_SEED, OPT_OUTPUT, OPT_NoFloats, sqrtdispflag, simp,
> >
> assume_pos,n,m,p,q,questionAns,questionStem0,questionStem1,questionNote0],
> > RANDOM_SEED:1144827616, OPT_OUTPUT:"LaTeX", make_multsgn(dot),
> > make_complexJ(i), OPT_NoFloats:true, sqrtdispflag:true, simp:true,
> > assume_pos:false, print("[TimeStamp= [ 1146579926 ], Locals= [ ") ,
> > print("0=[ error= ["), cte("n",errcatch(n:3)) , print("1=[ error= ["),
> > cte("m",errcatch(m:5)) , print("2=[ error= ["),
> > cte("p",errcatch(p:2*(x-n)^2*(x-m))) , print("3=[ error=
> > ["), cte("q",errcatch(q:expand(p))) , print("4=[ error= ["),
> > cte("questionAns",errcatch(questionAns:p)) , print("5=[
> > error= ["), cte("questionStem0",errcatch(questionStem0:q))
> > , print("6=[ error= ["),
> > cte("questionStem1",errcatch(questionStem1:n)) , print("7=[
> > error= ["), cte("questionNote0",errcatch(questionNote0:p))
> > , print("] ]") , return(true) );
> >
> > can you spot something whose behaviour has changed from 5.9.2 to 5.9.3=
?
> >
> > saluti,
> > Michele
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Nicolas Pettiaux - email: nicolas.pettiaux at ael.be
>