Re: [Axiom-developer] hyperlinked algebra

[C Y]

--- Ralf Hemmecke <address@hidden> wrote:

> C Y wrote:
> > If pstricks can indeed do all that we want with fancy
> > linking and diagrams it might be a better target than 
> > XYpic - there exist some fairly sophisticated graphing
> > routines for pstricks, and it would be fun to teach Axiom 
> > to output (say) pst-3dplot TeX instead of an image
> > for plotting.  (Although I'm not sure how well it could
> > render some things - experimentation would be required).
> > 
> > I had intended to explore this possibility with XYpic, but
> > initially at least it should be either XYpic or pstricks 
> > instead of both.  If there is the desire for the other later
> > it can always be added.
> 
> I am not completely sure, but I fear that pstricks (as the 
> name  suggests) does some trick in PostScript. I don't think
> that it would be wise to rely on that package if our goal 
> would be to create different forms of output (dvi, ps, pdf,
> html, ...).

I don't propose to rely on it, just to have it as an output option for
Axiom's TeX routines.

The only think we might actually rely on either of these for is for
hyperlinked diagrams.  So far we have (please correct me if I've missed
something Bill):

XYPic:  Can create hyperlinked diagrams without requiring postscript
specific logic, but result renders slowly in Acroread.  Command syntax
is complex to say the least.  Does not have many packages written using
it.

PSTricks:  Can create hyperlinked diagrams.  Requires postscript logic
as an intermediate step, but result appears to render much faster in
Acroread than XYPic's output.  Somewhat less intimidating than XYpic in
the syntax department, and has a great deal of convenient plotting and
other packages which may also be useful to Axiom.  There are a variety
of options which can be used to create pdf output to be explored, some
of which also permit the use of pdflatex for final steps.

Neither way has yet demonstrated the ability to reproduce these
diagrams in HTML, and I am not at all sure how we would even want to
proceed there.  Images of the diagrams with image maps defined?  Some
sort of fixed text positioning?

Even though viable options exist for dvi and pdf for display, no one
has yet come up with a convincing way to generate a human usable
diagramming of the entire system.  A way must be found, and then the
logic to generate the required TeX automatically will need to be
created, probably as part of the Axiom build process.

> Can someone convince me that one can convert from ps to other 
> formats easily?

It's seldom effortless, but as Bill has demonstrated with the proper
options the dvi->ps->pdf path can produce good results.  I have a
feeling html will be the kicker, but then I'm not really sure HTML is
up to what we want to do in any case.

Seeing Bill's result I am much more comfortable with pstricks than I
was.  I have a feeling there are some really neat possibilities for
generating Axiom plotting output as pstricks LaTeX.  This is not
anything we will depend on, since Axiom can already produce graphics we
can include (witness the Axiom book) but it might be a spiffy feature
to offer the Axiom+LaTeX document writing crowd (hopefully there will
be a lot of them in the future ;-)

Cheers,
CY

P.S.  Incidently, I tried looking at the Leo tutorials last night and
my initial inclination is to stick with Emacs for now because of it's
AucTeX environment and other available goodies.  Leo's outlining is
interesting but for the moment I am more drawn to Emacs's document
editing features.  Also, it wasn't clear to me how to use leo to
produce both:

pamphlet->legal LaTeX document with source code in correct environment
pamphlet->source code that can be compiled 

The latter is obvious, but the former wasn't clear to me from what I
read.

Interesting Leo vs. Emacs remarks (maybe a bit dated now):
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/browse_frm/thread/dea941c6ba7c3440/9df6397eeb5244f4?lnk=st&q=Leo+emacs&rnum=1#9df6397eeb5244f4

Maybe worth a look:
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/ee/

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