Re: [Axiom-developer] A Canonical Axiom GUI

[Kai Kaminski]

"Bill Page" <address@hidden> writes:

> C Y <address@hidden> writes:
>> ... 
>>>>> 1.  I think a default GUI for Axiom would be a Very Good Thing
>>>
>>>Kai Kaminski wrote:
>>>> As I said, I'm not convinced.
>
> I am convinced that trying to build a graphical user interface that
> works only with Axiom would *not* be a good thing.
>
>> >
>> > No worries.  There is plenty of room here for differing 
>> > opinions :-).
>>
> On September 8, 2006 9:56 AM Kai Kaminski wrote:
>> Don't kid yourself. There's barely enough room for mine. ;-)
>>
>
> I do appreciate the sentiment in Kai's remark, which he indicates
> we should take as humour. But I am worried that some people who are
> potential contributors to this discussion might well perceive it
> as fact. If so, I think that is very unfortunate. Axiom is a very
> small project in terms of the number of active and vocal developers
> so it is easy to give the wrong impression. My opinions about Axiom
> development differ from other people on this list on a number of
> points and I don't feel shy about saying so. Is that setting an
> example or reinforcing the feeling that there is no more room for
> other opinions? :(

> Perhaps we need to do more to make sure that people feel like there
> is room here for differing opinions and that we would really like to
> hear them.
>
>>>>> 2.  The project is not yet at a point where this should be a
>>>>>     major focus for the project as a whole.
>>>>
>>>> That depends on what you mean. I believe the most important thing
>>>> is to make it developer friendly.
>
> Yes!
>
>>>> In particular we must be able to use all the open source Lisp
>>>> libraries that are available. Also, writing tools (especially
>>>> GUIs) for Axiom should be easy.
>
> While I would welcome anyone interesting in working on Axiom at the
> level of the Lisp code, I seriously doubt whether compatibility of
> Axiom with other open source Lisp libraries would make Axiom more
> "friendly" to such developers. Or did you have some specific
> libraries in mind that would have immediate application and mass
> appeal?
This is not about making Axiom attractive to random Lisp
developers. It's about making Axiom development easier by allowing the
use of existing libraries and tools. Also, by packaging certain
functionality into a library that is indepent of Axiom, we might get
people to work on that, if they have similar needs.

On common-lisp.net you can find lots of useful libraries for GUIs,
threads, file and directory operations, databases, XML parsing,
parsing in general, data compression, logging, text processing, type
setting, scientific computing and other things.

Kai