[Axiom-developer] Re: Meta Prag-Parse

[Henry Baker]

Tim:

Is there any documentation online anywhere (html, pdf) ?

Henry
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At 11:11 AM 6/20/03 -0400, Tim Daly wrote:
>Thanks for the quick response. I have a version of the Meta lisp
>code that was included with the parse documentation. Is there some
>way to decide whether this code is the latest? (If you put the code
>someplace I can download and diff).
>
>Bill Burge wrote an Axiom parser in Meta in the 60s. Bill is the author
>of a book on parsing techniques.
>
>Axiom is a large computer algebra system (originally one of the big
>commercial systems like Mathematica and Maple). It's been developed
>over the last 30 years and represents about 300 man-years of research
>at last count.
>
>NAG (The Numerical Algorithms Group) withdrew it from the market and
>gave it to me to open source. I was one of the original developers
>while it was a research project at IBM Research.
>
>There is a web page (savannah.nongnu.org/projects/axiom) that is
>the project home page. It will be in use shortly. Currently the
>code is on tenkan.org and can be downloaded using anonymous CVS.
>
>The home page is at www.nongnu.org/axiom and I've described some
>ideas for future directions there.
>
>There is a (alpha) runnable version of Axiom for Linux at:
>axiom.tenkan.org  
>
>The current state of the project is that the algebra portion of
>the system is mostly buildable from source code. I'm working to
>document the sources as well as chase known bugs. There are large
>portions of the system (e.g. hypertex, graphics) which are still
>on the list of things to do. 
>
>As for other formats, all of Axiom (lisp, c, meta, boot, makefiles, etc)
>is now in a common file format called pamphlets which is a literate
>programming language based on Tex. I'll grind the Meta stuff into the
>same format so it integrates with the rest of the developing documenation.
>
>I originally had an Axiom that ran on DOS many centuries ago in less
>than a meg of memory. I hope to port it to run on a Zaurus 5600 (that
>is assuming I can get funding for it). Since the 5600 is an intel
>chip running linux the port may even amount to a straight copy but
>I doubt it. There is no such thing as a simple job.
>
>Tim Daly
>address@hidden
>address@hidden