abcl-based Maxima (was "A couple of questions")

Ziga wrote:

> I know Rober Dodier is working with the developers of abcl to get the
> combination abcl+maxima running. It would be interesting to have
> maxima on JVM with reasonable speed (at least in the range of GCL) as
> it would mean that maxima would work on 90% of computers on this
> planet

"Maxima on the JVM with reasonable speed" can result in hundreds of
thousands of new Maxima users if it is marketed correctly and I have
been working on a marketing plan which is designed to achieve this.



>(though JVM is not opensource if I'm not mistaken).

It is open source (http://openjdk.java.net/).



> Accessing
> java classes could also be very beneficiary to maxima in various ways
> (faster plotting, interactive features, gui, numerical libraries...)

I think a powerful GUI and interactive features are two significant
benefits that Java can provide for Maxima.  As an example, I am in the
process of adding abcl-based Maxima to the Java-based MathRider
application:

http://mathrider.org

MathRider includes a CAS called MathPiper.  If you would like to get a
feel for how I imagine Maxima will work with MathRider, you can use
MathPiper as a guide.

MathRider also includes an interactive plotting application called
GeoGebra and it provides a good example of the potential for Maxima +
interactive plotting.

Ted