[Axiom-developer] "Sage-type" notebook in a web browser

[daly]

> One of the to-do's at
> 
> http://www.axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/currentstate.html
> 
> is "Write Notebook Front End".
> 
> I think that this should be do-able by somebody with expertise, and with
> time on their hands (i.e, not me!).  Sage does it by simply piggy-backing
> on iPython (http://ipython.org/), which provides a full API for a web-based
> notebook.
> 
> Other languages which have used iPython for this include Julia (
> http://julialang.org/), with its IJulia package (
> https://github.com/JuliaLang/IJulia.jl) and Haskell with IHaskell (
> https://github.com/gibiansky/IHaskell).  Other examples are given at
> https://github.com/ipython/ipython/wiki/Projects-using-IPython.  Given
> iPython, I would have thought that it would be quite possible to write a
> front end for Axiom, which applies LaTeX to the output so as to give nicely
> formatted display (again, I think this is provided by iPython).
> 

I've already implemented some of the functionality.

The browser front end contains code to communicate directly to Axiom.
You can type in an equation which gets sent to Axiom and the result
is displayed back in the browser. Some of the Hyperdoc pages have
already been rewritten and work properly. See Volume 11: Axiom Browser
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_(computer_algebra_system)

I do not use Python. It is Lisp talking to Javascript.

I have experimented with a re-implementation using web sockets
but I haven't got a completely working Lisp web socket interface yet.
Either my browser doesn't implement web sockets correctly yet or
I'm being thick about reading the specs. Anyway we both know that
"There is no such thing as a simple job."

Everything takes time. Hence the phrase "The 30 Year Horizon".



> One of the problems seems to me is that for whatever reason, Axiom is niche
> software, and doesn't have the user base of either Maxima or Sage.  It
> might be hard to garner support for such projects as this.

So? All mathematical software is niche software. It is not about the
current user base.  The long term issue is how it will be maintained. 
It is my claim, based on experience, that unless great effort is made 
to communicate to the next generation, any piece of software will die. 

See http://www.ams.org/notices/201202/rtx120200320.pdf

... therefore literate programming.

Tim