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

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Hi Tim et al,

On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 12:53:00PM -0500, root wrote:
> Dirk,
> 
> I've just tripped across your Quantian site. 
> (http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html)
> 
> I see that you have a CD tailored to numerical and quantitative analysis.
> I'd like to work with you on two fronts. 
> 
> FIrst, I'm the lead developer of Axiom, a large, free and open source
> computer algebra system. I'd like to work with you to add it to the
> Quantian CD if you feel it might be useful to your target audience.

Sure, I just checked and see that it is already packaged for Debian, and
even maintained by Camm, who is one of the number crunching whiz kids around
Debian.

But it also a huuuge package. If you look at the detailed package lists on
my Quantian sites, you see that there are few packages as large as that. I
cannot currently fit axiom on the cdrom edition of Quantian as those 700mb
(compressed) are taken up.  That said, I should definitiely add it to the
next 'kitchen sink' release (of isos > 700mb that can be booted from hd by
lilo and friends, and will morph into bootable dvds, one day).

That said, there is also at least some interest into reverse-engineering 
what Morphix does in terms of a core and several modules. There is enough
interest from different, non-overlapping user groups with non-overlapping
interests to warrant this. Unfortunately, I doubt i'll have time to look
into this.

> Second, I distribute a Rosetta CD at conferences I attend. I have dozens
> of free and open source algebra packages that I've collected and I 
> select a subset of them, based on the nature of the conference, to 
> create a CD. Perhaps some of them are of interest to you. In particular,
> I have a file called "Rosetta" that has tables which tell you how to
> write a command in a dozen different systems (e.g how to make a matrix
> in Axiom, Mathematica, Maple, etc).

Absolutely, that would be useful. Mind you, Debian cares less about
Mathematica and Maple as we can't distribute them. But to the extent that
users may have learned the ropes on those system, such cheat sheets are very
useful.  From the Octave and R projects, I know that people work on and off
on these w.r.t. Matlab and S-Plus compatibility.

> Michel Lavaud distributes a similar Rosetta CD for Windows.

Tony Rossini at U of Washington has (had?) something with a stats / latex
focus that is (was?) sponsored by ASA (stats folks), if memory serves.
 
> Let me know if you have any interest.

Sure do, let's talk some more.

Thanks,  Dirk

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