RE: [Axiom-developer] Papers on Indefinites

[Bill Page]

Cliff,

On September 17, 2006 2:45 PM you wrote:
> 
> Clearly I have some homework to do on this topic, and it's
> important enough that I want to be sure I have the correct
> sources. Looking over the archive links Bill provided (thanks Bill!)
> it looks like papers by Davenport and Fateman are recommended reading.
> Are these the specific papers in question?
> ...

Yes, they are relevant but not central to the issue that you raised.
In fact the concept of "indefinities" was coined by Tim Daly. After
reading about the idea, I do not think that this formulation of the
issue (which is essentially based on proof theory and logic) is the
right approach for Axiom. Really I would prefer a more "algebraic"
approach. I think the paper by Steven Watt referred to in the
following thread:

http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2006-08/msg00525.html

Making Computer Algebra More Symbolic (Invited), Stephen M. Watt,
pp. 43-49, Proc. Transgressive Computing 2006: A conference
in honor or Jean Della Dora , (TC 2006), April 24-26 2006,
Granada Spain.

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~watt/pub/reprints/2006-tc-sympoly.pdf

is a very important contribution. What he is describing here is
directly related to the implementation of the Expression domain
constructor in Axiom.
 
Regards,
Bill Page.