Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: A modest proposal (PLEQN documentation)

[Ralf Hemmecke]

> > The important thing is that the information is there. I am not so sure
> > that we already have a good format of how a pamphlet should look like.

> This is exactly my objections to the pamphlet format. It
> would be easier from the author's viewpoint to create
> different files for different uses, with cross-references
> among them. It would be much harder to design one single
> file that captures all possible views in a coherent way and
> still be able to be unraveled as readable for various
> separate views.

I don't disagree with you. As you might know, I would call a collection 
of files that describe some idea/code/design issues by the name 
pamphlet. So a pamphlet would be a kind of zip file similar to what an 
open office file is. But I should rather chose another name in order not 
to confuse people with what is currently understood by pamphlet.

It is totally nontrivial to use the same information in different views. 
That is a burden for the author and I haven't yet seen a good tool that 
helps to break information into such information atoms.

> I just skipped through AldorCombinat and except for the
> theory behind species, your documentation for the code and
> usage is quite extensive. I am however overwhelmed by the
> hundreds of chunks and occasionally the extra link
> information can be distracting (of course they are useful
> for debugging and code changes).

Yep. I don't claim it is the best that can be done. LP for me is an 
experiment. The current form is quite helpful for development, but it is 
not linearly human readable. I agree. I try to figure out myself how LP 
should look like in the daily programming life. So any comment from 
outside is welcome.

> Just one question: In
> Section 8.1, just before the bottom ToDo, the two formulae
> at the end of lines, do you mean $\cup_{U \subseteq L, U
> finite} \{U\}$ (and similarly for F[U])?

Oh, yes. But as you can probably read there. I need a much better 
description. I'd like to formulate that in a categorial way, but I would 
need that a species is not a functor F: B->B but an L indexed something.
If you can think of a way how to incorporate the type L business into a 
categorial setting, I would be over grateful.

> We all have limited time and that is why the priority of the
> Axiom project should be to increase user base. If there are
> more users, Axiom will be used at more universities
> (especially if a fully functioning Windows version is
> available) and even commercial houses (but they don't
> "count" in my books); we will have more students who can do
> a lot of work such as documentation (writing pamphlets if
> that is the standard) as undergraduate or master theses.
> Doctoral students can develop better models, new and newer
> algorithms for Axiom's foundation and implement them. 

I support that view very much.

Ralf