Re: [Axiom-developer] [fricas-devel] Re: trademarks

[u1204]

Ralf,

>We are in the unfortunate situation of having 3 systems that are
>terribly similar but not equal. Would be nice if we converged, but I
>don't see this to happen in the near future. So it's only fair if people
>are made aware of the differences of the systems.

You'll notice that I have made an effort to pick up some of the changes
from FriCAS. For instance, the Type output form now includes parens for
InputForm parsing. I've also picked up some of the algebra changes as
I become aware of them. For instance, enumerate now exists, the MAMA
package exists, U8Matrix, U16Matrix, and U32Matrix as well as the
U{8,16,32}Vector domains exist.

However, changes that diverge from the Jenks book, such as the change
to the semantics of ^, are not likely to happen.

FriCAS has not picked up the work on PackageForAlgebraicFunctionField,
for instance. Nor has it picked up AxiomServer and its corresponding
browser front-end machinery so the new browser-based hyperdoc/graphics
won't work there. There are dozens of new test case files in src/input.
Code examples are shown on ")d op foo" for operation foo which I think
is a good idea for users. There is a help file for all algebra.
Volume 8.1 has dozens of graphics examples, all of which should work
in FriCAS. A lot of this effort is aimed at the end user.

Noweb is disappearing. The pamphlet files are now pure latex so 
there is no need for a "weave" step. Pamphlet files are a native
format so you can )tangle from the command line.

I don't believe that the systems will ever converge. 
We have different and incompatible project goals.

I would prefer that we at least tried to keep the algebra aligned.
We all have a common interest in that. I try to achieve that when
I find algebra incompatibilities. I do wish the algebra had better
documentation though. It can be hard to guess what the slattern()
function does if you're not a domain expert. Why bother keeping
the pamphlet file format if there are no words?

Tim