[Axiom-developer] Re: Axiom wiki

[root]

Bob,

> I have had some user confusion because people think they can use *any*
> latex in a wiki page, but they cannot.  Adding more latex-like
> constructs makes this worse.  :(  I intended latexwiki to be simple to
> edit (hence, StructuredText) plus minimal equations.  A full latex
> backend would be nice, but is a different direction than I started.  If
> you desire this we should make a new pagetype 'LaTeX' that uses tex4ht.

Since there hasn't been any discussions of the long term goal of
the axiom wiki I guess it's normal to see things move in surprising
directions. Here are some of the thoughts that Bill's work inspire.

Axiom is based entirely on pamphlet files. Pamphlet files are just
standard latex with a couple extras to support "inline" code in
the file. They are the basis of the literate programming style in
Axiom. So every file in Axiom is a pamphlet. I'm not familiar with
the details of "pagetypes" but perhaps a pamphlet pagetype is needed.

If the Axiom wiki effort can support pamphlet <=> webpage translations
it would have two benefits. First it would provide an interesting
front-end to Axiom, especially with Bill's automation of running
Axiom on a wiki web page. This turns out to be nearly as powerful
as Mathematica and Maple notebooks. In fact, with some clever web
page buttons we could probably reproduce their complete functionality.

If web pages could be converted to, or written originally on the wiki as,
pamphlet files then it would be possible to maintain Axiom directly on
the wiki which would practically be a research breakthru. It would
eliminate the hard-to-use CVS mechanism, enable people to use Axiom
directly as a "service" and encourage open math development on the wiki.

I've been struggling with the issue of how to develop a browsing 
structure for Axiom's pamphlet and this wiki has great potential
to solve that problem in a truly novel way.

Axiom uses a fairly limited range of Latex mostly because my Latex
talents are limited. Support for the \begin{array} environment or
the \begin{thebibliography} environment are about the most difficult 
of the parts of the Latex used. (Actually, if the \bibitems in a 
bibliography were automatically turned into hyperlinks that would
be sweet).

In any case the whole Axiom wiki idea opens up a lot of excellent,
creative directions that I think we need to explore further.

Tim