Re: [Axiom-mail] finding source code

[Martin Baker]

> May I ask how you found out about Axiom? What version did you
> actually install on your computer?

Ralf,

I have been looking for an open source computer algebra system for some time 
although I did not try any, I came across Axiom in lists of such systems but I 
did not try it because (for some reason) I was put off when it said that it 
was based on LISP.

Having tried it now it works well and it seems very good (I wish I had done so 
earlier). At first sight the user language reminds me a bit of 'Scala' in that 
the type is given after the variable if required, also the way that brackets 
can sometimes be omitted for what looks to me like function calls.

I loaded the binary from this page:
http://www.axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/download.html
(suse,May2009)

I recorded what I did on my web page here:
http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/standards/program/

As you can see the program seems to work except the draw function which seems 
to fail with:

>> System error:
Unknown bfd format

The only other problem is capturing the output to put on a web page, you can 
see what I mean about 2/3 of the way down this screen:

http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/algebra/equations/polynomial/cubic/

Apart from being too big for the page, not all the LaTeX seemed to be 
recognised (I cut and pasted from Axiom to Lyx and then did a screen shot).

So, that's my experience so far, apart from these small problems it looks like 
a very useful program.

Martin