[Axiom-developer] RE: REDUCE on test.axiom-developer.org

[Bill Page]

Bob,

On Thursday, July 29, 2004 7:48 PM you wrote:

> ...
> > 
> > http://test.axiom-developer.org/Members/billpage/TestReduce
> > 
> 
> Neat!
> 
> I wonder if your last example on that page is correct...neither
> Maple nor Mathematica will do that integral.

I don't know. My only concern was the claim made often for Axiom
hat due to the nature of the algorithm for integration "it will
either give an answer or a demonstration that no answer exists".
In this rather simple case it failed. But as Tim said, this is
probably due to Axiom not (yet) handling a specific case. I
wonder if there are other missing cases and if so, I wonder if
there is anyone around with enough knowledge of the algorithm
to fill in these gaps?

> 
> I was thinking to separate your code into a different PageType.
> i.e. the PageType specifies what this document is *written* in.
> Separate from that is the presentation (i.e. png/mathml which
> should not be a page type -- as I have it now).

I agree but I do not yet have the skills to do this.

> Is the new Reduce stuff in your darcs repository?

Yes. It is here

  http://page.axiom-developer.org/repository/LatexWiki

The patch is named "Reduce interface".

> 
> But now we have two math backends...and it might be very 
> useful to have both in the same document.  So should we
> define a StructuredText+LaTeX+Math pagetype where 'Math'
> refers to any symbolic backend?

That makes sense to me. Whether specific programs such as
Axiom or Reduce are supported could be determined dynamically
based on whether the appropriate environment is installed.
If it is not installed, then a reference to a specific system
will just look like another user-defined LaTeX environment.
Perhaps I can define some default LaTeX coding in LatexTemplate
that would make these environments display appropriately even
when the necessary program is not available.

> It would also be useful to do a bit of stylesheet magic to
> differentiate between Axiom/Reduce/Maxima...  Perhaps some 
> small text in the UR corner that says what language this is.

I think that is a good idea. You can see an example of this
in the newest version of the code at

  http://test.axiom-developer.org/Members/billpage/TestReduce

Note also my comments there about using the Reduce tri package
(TeX) package rather than the rlfi package (LaTeX). The first
version used rlfi but I ran into a problem. And tri does seem
to have some advantages in terms of line breaking etc.

Regards,
Bill Page.