[Axiom-developer] RE: Axiom interface

[Bill Page]

On October 14, 2006 6:19 PM William Stein wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Oct 2006 15:01:29 -0700, Bill Page  wrote:
> > Great. Are you having any problems with the pexpect sychronization
> > on you laptop? I am still not entirely satisfied that the process
> > I use for disabling readline is reliable since it is done by a
> > command that is sent while readline itself is still in place. On
> > my laptop where Axiom was built without readline, everything
> > seems ok to me but on the axiom-developer server I am having
> > some problems. Since Axiom is built on Lisp it is easy to disable
> > readline and then save a new copy of the Axiom binary which
> > starts with readline disabled. Maybe this would be a good thing
> > to do while installing Sage with Axiom?
> 
> I don't know.  We *do* want readline (or equiv) support when you
> use Axiom from the command line.  I wouldn't want to ship an
> axiom with SAGE that doesn't have readline support.
>

Axiom has it's own built-in equivalent of readline called 'clef'.
Clef also provides Axiom-specific command completions. Clef is
functional whether or not readline is available in AXIOMsys. The
only reason why readline is an issue is because in recent releases
of GCL readline is compiled in by default and AXIOMsys is derived
from GCL. Whether clef is enabled or not can be controlled from
the axiom command line, i.e.

  $ axiom -noclef

When run internally in Sage, the option -noclef would be used.
When run in console mode, clef would be enabled by default.
 
> >> Are you OK with the following for the copyright statement on
> >> axiom.py?
> ... 
> I'll make the copyright be just me, but I'll make it abundantly
> clear how much work you put into the interface, etc.   E.g.,
> 
> AUTHORS OF THIS MODULE:
>      -- Bill Page (2006-10): Created this (based on maxima interface)
>         NOTE: Bill Page put a huge amount of effort into the SAGE
          Axiom interface over several days during the SAGE Days 2
          coding sprint.  This contribution is greatly appreciated.
>      -- William Stein (2006-10): misc touchup.
> 

That's fine.

Regards,
Bill Page.