Richard,
> Instead of inserting LAPACK source into the Maxima source, how about
> pointing to a few binary forms, one for each plausible host environment,
> with a suitable interface. Perhaps we could even point to matlisp, which
> apparently solves the problem of the foreign function interface for cmucl
> and allegro.
That would make Maxima an even bigger mess.
We have a pretty good way to get Fortran code running, namely f2cl.
I don't see why we would want to retreat to platform and Lisp specific
solutions, given that we have a pretty good chance of getting stuff to
work on multiple platform/Lisp combinations.
I think you've seriously understated the work involved in getting
some library linked into Maxima (be it Lisp, .so, .dll, whatever).
It is certainly not something we can expect typical users to carry out.
It is a significant effort even for the Maxima developers.
> There are many other programs in netlib that could potentially be of
> interest to maxima users, and for someone on this list to speculate on what
> is most useful and spend time converting or interfacing such a program --
> without an application in mind -- seems to have the potential for a major
> distraction.
We can safely say that LAPACK is useful to many people.
It is hardly a distracting speculation.
For what it's worth,
Robert