[Axiom-mail] Re: Axiom, Rosetta and Quantian

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 03:18:36PM -0500, root wrote:
> >> The Rosetta document I maintain has "synonyms" for commands from
> >> Axiom, Derive, GAP, Gmp, DoCon, Macsyma, Magnus, Maxima, Maple,
> >> Mathematcia, MuPAD, Octave, Pari, Reduce, Scilab, Sumit, and Yacas.
> >
> >A good number of these are already in Quantian.
> 
> Yeah, I saw that. You might want to add the Rosetta doc to the CD.
> It's quite small and your current user set might find it useful.
> If you extend it to other systems I'd like to know so I can add
> the changes back.

Yes, at first I had not noticed that it was part of the email. I'll try to
get to it.

> >> Lavaud did a really nice front-end for his version of Rosetta that
> >> made it possible to start individual packages from a list.
> >
> >As a launcher? Or as in 'will be added to the iso'.
> 
> Presumably the users would want to run an individual package.
> Centralizing the launching (and config-ing/installing?) would
> make the system somewhat more user-affectionate. Clearly we don't
> want to go very far in this direction as we'd step on the individual
> package responsibilities but some uniform introduction might be useful.
> I'll look at what math packages you have installed and see if I can
> cons something simple together as an example.

Not sure if you've tried Debian, Knoppix or Quantian before, but look at how
the 'KDE' button in the bottom-left expands to sets of menus ... which, this
being Unix after all, is of course fully scriptable and configurable.

What had lacked so far was some editorial input / feedback on what to put
where. I am so swamped with work, life, family, all my Debian packages,
Quantian, ... that I haven't even gotten around to setting up an exchange
with all the Debian package maintainers for math / science / quant packages
in Debian and Quantian.  

So I really do welcome this exchange. 

> Can you point me at some info about how you build one of these CDs?
> I'll try to create one that has the proposed intro script.

There is a document in the HOWTO section of the Quantian pages. While it
comes from an older Quantian version, all the individual steps are still the
same.  You need a loop kernel module to mount the iso, copy its conntent
out, mount the compressed KNOPPIX iso image with the cloop module (source
for cloop in Debian at at Knopper's site), write it out -- tehn chroot into
the expanded 'flat' filesytems, and at the end reverse the process by
building a compressed iso inside the outer iso.  

More (and more comprehensible :) info is a knoppix.net.

Hth, Dirk

> Let me know if there are other ways you think I can help make this
> happen.
> 
> Tim
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
The relationship between the computed price and reality is as yet unknown.  
                                             -- From the pac(8) manual page