[Axiom-developer] RE: AxiomUI project funded

[Bill Page]

On June 26, 2005 5:18 AM Kai Kaminski wrote:

> ...
> It seems obvious to me that using a web browser to replace hyperdoc
> is a good idea. A browser can also be used to implement a GUI,
> although I would love to see a portable GUI written in CL using
> wxWidgets bindings (which don't exist yet).

Also not easily portable to Windows, I think.

> I'm not so fond of TeXmacs though. While it is a great piece of
> software it has been a bit sluggish when I used it in the past.
> It also doesn't look very native on OS X and presumably Windows.

The Windows version is "ok" but you are right that it does not
look completely "native".

> It also uses TeX to render its output I believe.

No. It has it's own renderer. TeX is not used but it does
use TeX fonts.

> That's good for quality but not so good for development.

TeXmacs typeset quality is very good and it's conversion from
LaTeX (such as used by the Axiom interface for TeXmacs) is
good but not perfect. I think quite a few people do use Axiom
this way on both Linux and Windows.

But I think the idiosyncratic style of TeXmacs C++ source code
is also not so good for development.

> Since cl-typesetting seems to be very much alive and under
> active development by some of the best OSS Lisp developers
> it might be possible to develop a GUI from scratch.

Sounds way too much like hard work to me!

Regards,
Bill Page.