On 04/05/2013 10:51 AM, Martin Baker wrote:
It seems a sight irony that Axiom(the program) does not do much about
axioms.
Of course, AXIOM can deal with axioms, but the SPAD language does not
include any way to specify axiom (not even Aldor can do this).
Looks like you aim at a general term rewriting system.
Yes, but again I recognise that there are no resources, so I was
wondering if it would be possible to start with a very simple domain
For a term rewriting system you basically have to start with the
implementation of a term algebra. The signature would basically tell,
what symbols are allowed. Since LISP is so fitting for a representation
of such a term algebra, it is no surprise that quite a lot of computer
algebra systems were written in LISP.
Then you can add equations (axioms) and a mechanism to reduce a given
term modulo such equations. But there is no general algorithm to
transform a given term modulo such equation into a canonical form. A
"canonical form" does not even exist for every given term rewriting
system. The non-existence of the "eierlegende Wollmilchsau"
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eierlegende_Wollmilchsau
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eierlegende_Wollmilchsau) is the reason
why people work on specialized solvers and use special representations
of the respective term algebra to make things fast.