RE: Running Axiom in Texmacs for Windows (was: [Texmacs-dev] Plug ins)

[Page, Bill]

On Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 3:36 PM Dan Martens wrote 

> That's great news!  So you have tested this with wintexmacs or
> just standalone on the command line?

Yes, I have installed it in wintexmacs and used it in place
of the Cygwin version. So far it seems to be working fine
(and noticably faster).

>  I have not gotten around to running Axiom yet as I have been
> busy with other projects.  I promise to soon though :)

Great. I think you will find it an exciting tool - especially
when used with TeXmacs.

> If you did get it working under wintexmacs, please provide
> the following info:
>
> 1) Was there anything special required (aside from tm_axiom.exe)
> to run it in a texmacs session?

No, just start use

  Insert/Session/Axiom

and start typing Axiom commands.

> 2) Where would the standard distribution be installed on a typical
> windows box?  (ie. C:\Program Files\Axiom).

This has not been decided yet but yes, I have my copy installed in

  c:\Program Files\axiom\mnt\windows

There are a number of sub-directories include one called bin
where the programs are stored. Other sub-directories include
things like the algebra library files etc.

> 3) Is the binary that TeXmacs should look for and execute the
> tm_axiom.exe?

That is the name of the interface program. I believe that it is
configurable in some script that is specific to each "plug=in" but
such configuration requires some extra skill and knowledge - not
for a beginning user.

Anyway, I think that TeXmacs currently looks for the actual
external program. In the case of Axiom TeXmacs looks for an
executable named AXIOMsys - the main Axiom program. Axiom showed
up right away when I installed your version of TeXmacs on the
same system where I had already installed Axiom. I think all
that it needed was for AXIOMsys to be in the path. But it
would not run because it tried to load the tm_axiom plugin
which it assumed was in one of the TeXmacs directories as in
the case of the linux distribution.

All that I had to do was provide TeXmacs with an executable
named tm_axiom and put it a place where TeXmacs could run
it. I haven't tried but I presume that it would probably
work any place in the PATH. In my case I copied it directly
in the TeXmacs bin sub-directory.

Since it seems that many of the external routines that assist
TeXmacs with interfacing with other systems will have to be
re-written specifically for Windows, perhaps it would be less
confusing of they were given Windows version specific names,
e.g. tmwin_axiom.exe
 
> Once I have this info, I will add Axiom to the auto-search
> mechanism for the next windows release.

TeXmacs seems to find Axiom automatically already (provided that
it is configured to run from the command line via the PATH).

Regards,
Bill Page.