Re: [Texmacs-dev] Re: TeXmacs interface to OpenAxiom

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 3:48 AM, Joris van der Hoeven
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 03:35:46AM -0500, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
>> > I did a little testing.  First I did 'apt-get install texmacs' on my
>> > Debian 5.0 system where I have all three of Axiom, OpenAxiom and
>> > FriCAS installed. Starting texmacs I tried to 'Insert/Session" but I
>> > noticed that the 'Axiom" option was not present.  So I did a little
>> > digging and found that the tm_init script is looking for a specific
>> > file named '/usr/bin/axiom'. I created a symbolic link from
>> > /usr/bin/axiom -> /usr/local/bin/open-axiom and then I was apparently
>> > able to start an "Axiom" session but I got symptoms very similar to
>> > what you described - except worse. I had to enter something 5 or 6
>> > times before it produced any output and then sometimes it still did
>> > not work.
>>
>> I build and installed TeXmacs from the sVN source.  Curiously, I would not
>> find trace of the 'tm_init' program in the destination (for me, it is
>> /usr/local) by a recursive `find'. Joris, is that program supposed to be
>> installed through special incantation?
>
> No, there is no such program in TeXmacs. This is probably something
> someone wrote for the Axiom side.

OK.

>
>> I think looking for the hard path "/usr/bin/axiom" is a mistake.  That 
>> should be
>> looked for only if a relative serach from PATH fails.  Once, I understand
>> the intricacies of the plugins (yes. I've read the doc), I'll contribute code
>> for looking for OpenAxiom.  But, right now, it looks as if half of the 
>> TeXmacs
>> helper programs were never installed when I issued `make install'.
>
> TeXmacs has no special logic to search for plug-ins (except testing
> whether a file exists or whether a file exists in a path, such as $PATH).
> It is the responsability of the plug-in to find the corresponding program,
> if it is installed. For most plug-ins (see the other plug-ins) it indeed
> suffices to check whether the program is in the path.
>
> Notice that this point may also require special treatment on Windows.

Indeed.  Alfredo has a port for Windows.  He just proposed to work it
out for Unix systems too.

>
>> > Instead of starting texmacs to test, you can run tm_axiom filter
>> > directly like this:
>> >
>> >   /usr/lib/texmacs/TeXmacs/bin/tm_axiom
>
> For debugging, you can also launch TeXmacs using
>
>        texmacs --debug-io

OK, thanks!

-- Gaby