RE: [Axiom-developer] status of windows version

[Bill Page]

Hi Alfredo,

On February 21, 2007 8:25 PM you wrote:
> Bill Page wrote: 
> > Do you mean something like the Doyen LiveCD? Perhaps we need
> > to encourage Alfredo to produce a new version...
> 
> No encouragement needed just more time :-).
> 

Oh, I know that problem!

> Please let me know what Axiom "version" should I use or if
> I should wait for a possible new Silver (build-improvements +
> wh-sandbox).
>

Well, my personal opinion is that it is no good to wait. We
should use the best of what we have right now. What that might
be 6 months from now, it is hard to tell. Open source projects
like Axiom really do not have schedules and resources like in
the commercial world; it all depends on personal initiative and
how much people are willing and able to give to others.

For a new Linux distribution of Axiom I favour wh-sandbox. It has
the greatest and most significant number of fixes and improvements
as far as the end user is concerned. Waldek has done a great job
of repairing and even completing parts of Hyperdoc that never were
resolved in the "commerical" version. I have never liked hyperdoc
much because I found it so unstable and the gui rather dry and ugly,
but the new wh-sandbox version is changing my mind a little - because
it actally works. Waldek has also corrected a number of significant
bugs in the algebra and added Martin's GUESS package.

For a new Windows distribution of Axiom hyperdoc is not an issue
since there is no available hyperdoc version for Windows, but the
build procedure that does not assume X-windows is important, so our
best choice right now is build-improvements.

Merging the downstream algebra bug fixes from wh-sandbox back into
build-improvements is only a matter of using svn to pick and apply
the appropriate revisions from the repository. If I some how find
a few minutes of the next week, perhaps I can do that. Merging the
GUESS build changes might be a bit more challenging.

Even if no one gets a chance to do any merging, building a new
Windows version from build-improvements is still worth it because
build-improvements is based on Axiom Gold (patch-50) while the
current windows build is two years old and based on about patch-30
or something like that and an older version of GCL.

> ...

Regards,
Bill Page