[Axiom-developer] Re: allprose missing file

[Ralf Hemmecke]

root wrote:
> despite the missing .sty file it works!
> this is cool. we have to import this technology into axiom.

If you like.

> of course it appears that you've licensed it under GPL and
> we'd need your permission to include it under a second BSD
> license.

It took me quite a long time to read through several of the open source
licenses. I knew that someone would ask me about BSD, since I somehow
tend to support Axiom. Nevertheless, I have chosen GPL, since somehow I
don't like the idea that someone could take my code, add some little
detail, close the source, and sell everything without giving me one cent
or at least the source of his/her extensions. That is a bit unfair in my
eyes. So the current answer to releasing ALLPROSE under BSD is no.

However, that does not mean that Axiom cannot use ALLPROSE. In fact, I 
did on purpose only announce ALLPROSE on aldor-l and not (yet) on the 
axiom-developer mailing list, since I could not see that it would be 
useful out of the box. There are quite a few things missing, I guess.
Don't worry too much about the license. I am a friend of Axiom.

ALLPROSE is a tool for Aldor library-writers and hopefully becomes
some kind of standard for an Axiom Journal.

ALLPROSE in Axiom would only be important for the part that lives under
the algebra directory. Even there it cannot yet be used since that code
is SPAD code which is not supported by ALLPROSE.

But let me tell you what I did last weekend.
I experimented with the .pamphlet files. Happyly, they have a quite
regular structure. Most of them look like,

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{axiom}
\begin{document}
\title{...}
\author{...}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
...
\end{abstract}
...
\end{document}

That is fine, or nearly fine, say. ALLPROSE tries to produce one
document, so all pamphlet files are handed over to noweave as one big
file so that cross-referencing can be done via hyperref. In fact, also
noweb adds some cross-references and indices.
(Unfortunately I had to remove the -index switch for noweave since LaTeX 
runs out of memory with it.)

What I could provide for Axiom would be to extract several parts of
ALLPROSE, so that an Axiom developer could produce a hyperlinked .dvi
file (with "inverse search" enabled, ie, clicking on the .dvi file opens
your favourite editor and jumps immediately to the place in the
corresponding .pamphlet file).

I've already produced such a .dvi file for several subdirectories. If 
somebody is interested in the corresponding (preliminary) code, just 
drop me a mail.

Those Makefiles and .sty files are extracted from ALLPROSE and work on 
an unmodified axiom--main--1--patch-46. I am not sure whether this is 
near to what you want, Tim.

Anyway, I have to use a script to remove
\documentclass, the whole preample and \begin{document}, \end{document}
I wonder why they are there anyway. Noweb could produce a wrapper.
Well, you might say, some files use \usepackage{graphicx} or
\documentclass{book}. That's true, but you can count those files with 
your two hands.

Books are special by their very nature, but as for ordinary code files
in pamphlet format I would like to suggest either

1) no \documentclass, no preample, no \(begin|end){document} or
2) Wrapper in the file in the form
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{axiom}
\begin{document}
...
\end{document}

I'd prefer 1) because the wrapper for 2 could be done by the "document"
script. If the "document" script will be needed any longer anyway.

It is absolutely vital for me in order to produce ONE big document that
the preample of all files is identical (which is nearly the case anyway
in the current .pamphlet files of axiom--main--1--patch-46). What do you
think?

I looked through the sources but could not find a guideline of how 
.pamphlet files should look like. Obviously, Tim, your intention was 
that each file is a separate document (a complete LaTeX file with added 
<<CHUNKS>>). Where is the pamphlet structure described?

When I designed ALLPROSE I have chosen the extension .nw as a standard. 
If the _one_ DVI file approach of ALLPROSE with all the hyperlinking it 
enables is interesting for Axiom, and the LaTeX-wrapper of the .pamphlet 
files goes away, I would consider to change .nw into .pamphlet. But this 
would mean a little restriction to the general source files (which would 
not include books).

Ralf