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

[root]

>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.

Actually, I teach a course in open source programming and I use Knoppix
as one of the Linux install examples. Being an emacs user I haven't had
much use for menus :-) I'll look into how Knoppix creates those menu
entries and try to get Axiom into an installed copy.

>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. 

Yeah, I get the whole swamp(ed) thing. Axiom is so big that any given
task, no matter how simple, gets multiplied by a factor of 1000. I'm
rewriting the documentation (a task I started in September) and I'm
hoping to publish the v1.0 in the May-June timeframe.

I had plans to put Axiom on a live-CD install which was what I was
researching when I found your Quantian site. Being an Arlo Guthrie
fan I figured that rather than make two small piles we could combine
the work and make one big pile. Quantian is "the right idea" (well,
it agrees with my direction anyway :-) ).

Given that this is open source and "advocacy is volunteering" I'm
willing to do what I can to make this useful. So my current thinking is:

(a) install Quantian (I just finished downloading the CD)
(b) figure out how to modify Knoppix menus
(c) add a math submenu with the various packages
(d) get Axiom to run
(e) add Axiom to the menus
(f) figure out how to burn a live-CD
(g)
(h) profit!

I'll work on (a) and (b) this weekend.

>> 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.

As an interesting aside, one of my religious beliefs about this whole
Computational Mathematics area is that we have to start combining the
research papers with the code. The first cut I've made at this is to
use Knuth's literate programming tools (actually, Norman Ramsey's 
noweb version). I believe that unless we keep the research with the
code we won't be able to maintain and modify these systems. 

What's that got to do with Quantian? Two things are related.

Dr. Traverso at the University of Pisa in Italy is trying to create
a Journal based on a similar idea where you submit papers that include
the source code. Quantian would be an ideal way to "provide a base"
for people to execute the embedded code. Ideally you could just 
"drag and drop" the paper onto one of the systems and run the code but
that is a long way in the future.

ISSAC 2004 is trying to publish its proceedings on CD this year.  If
we get a good distribution of Quantian with a wide range of systems
available we could make the case for distributing the CD at the
conference and suggesting that ISSAC 2005 accept some papers built
around the systems on the CD, especially those that show methods of
combining the research with the implementation.

Tim, the swamp thing