[Axiom-developer] Re: Pamphlet format discussion

[Bill Page]

On 7/21/07, Tim Daly wrote:
> ...
> So, two points then.
>
> 1) "Rewriting basic tools is a waste of current and future resources."
>
> ...
> There are no "current and future" resources. This is a volunteer effort
> and we only get to decide our own resource usage. Objecting to the use
> other people make of their time isn't a topic of debate.

I do not object to how you spend you time. My only objection is the
the direction in which you lead the Axiom project. In my opinion this
direction of development results in significant wasted effort.

> 2) "I don't know what "future planned use" involves but in my opinion
>    more radical changes in literate programming philosophy are required
>    than can be accomplished by changes of this kind."
>
> At the present time there is no user-visible difference between noweb
> and cl-web (or, for non-ansi, gclweb). Thus they are functionally
> equivalent.
>
> Since you don't have future plans and don't know of any future plans
> it seems that you must be objecting to my future plans.  For instance,
> there have been discussions of my future plans for crystal on this
> list in the past. Clearly noweb is not adequate for those "future
> plans".

If by "plans" you are referring to your email of a few years ago
regarding your vision of a "crystal" as a navigation mechanism in
Axiom, then as I said I think your current approach of extending noweb
and incorporating noweb-like access in Axiom is entirely inadequate. I
much more radical approach to literate programming and to the Axiom
user interface in general is required.

> Rather than say "no" to system change it seems more useful to propose
> an alternative. Anyone can say "no" but that just slows progress.

It is only my opinion, but "progress" in the wrong direction seems
worse than no progress. In fact I have proposed some alternatives
including Leo and the kind of Axiom-related features that I have
implemented in MathAction. I think either (or both) of these
approaches is much more interesting that playing with noweb syntax.

> What plans do you have that are impacted by the change?
> How can we compromise on the plans you have versus the plans I have?

I do not think your plans will have much impact on my own use of Axiom.

> It also seems that your objections are at the level of construction
> (don't put that brick there) rather than architecture (we need 4 bell
> towers, not 3).
>
> Architectural decisions are reasonably subject to objection and vote.
> Construction decisions follow from necessity and aren't appropriate
> for voting.

I don't understand what you are trying to say here.

> From my point of view what I have been talking about is at the level
of the Axiom system architecture.

Regards,
Bill Page.