[Axiom-mail] Axiom Journal

[root]

All,

Axiom is in the process of becoming open sourced.
With luck we expect to have at least the interpreter and algebra
portions available by year end. More info exists at:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/axiom

I believe that we need to push the development of Axiom with a 30 year
goal in mind. That is, we need to make sure that we have a quality
system that can be used, maintained and enhanced by the next
generation 30 years from now.

Axiom, as you know, has a vast amount of algebra encoded.
Unfortunately the documentation for the algorithms exists as thesis
work and conference papers which ar enshrined in research libraries. 
Most people do not have access to these papers. So, unlike other 
open source projects, you cannot simply tell people to "read the code".

In order to address this problem Axiom is pushing hard in the
direction of completely developing the system using literate
programming. On the algebra front this means that we need to
do two things. 

First, we need to find the original sources for the research behind
the algorithms in Axiom. Once these are found we need to create a
literate document that wraps the source code with the theory and
reduces the whole to a coherent explanation. We have created a
document format based on Knuth's literate programming idea and
Norman Ramsey's noweb implementation called "Pamphlets". Pamphlets
are basically TeX documents with a few additional tags so virtually
all of the mathematics community can use it immediately.

In order to take the first step all of Axiom's internals are now
implemented using pamphlet files. These files contain explanations
for developers so the internals can be maintained. There will be
an effort to extend this to the algebra files. We have a working
prototype for one domain (dhmatrix.spad).

Second, we need to encourage people to consider combining algorithms
with the theory in future technical papers. Currently one gets credit
for developing the theory but not the algorithm. I believe this needs
to change. Papers need to include the algorithm so reviewers and
readers can easily reproduce the results and use the implementation.
Physics and Chemistry require results to be reproduced; why not
Computational Mathematics? Why can't we just "drag and drop" a
technical paper onto a running system and have it work?

In order to take the second step we need to foster a forum for
publication of literate programs in Computational Mathematics.
I'm proposing creating an "Axiom Journal" which uses these
Pamphlet files as the submission format (basically, TeX with
trivial extensions).

What is your opinion of creating such a Journal?

Tim Daly
address@hidden