From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id ED843BC69 for ; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 12:07:40 +0100 (CET) Received: from postar.fmf.uni-lj.si (vega.fmf.uni-lj.si [193.2.67.45]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id l28B7eSo022402 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 12:07:40 +0100 Received: from localhost (unknown [192.168.5.1]) by postar.fmf.uni-lj.si (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6E0791175AE; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 12:07:39 +0100 (CET) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at spam.fmf.uni-lj.si Received: from postar.fmf.uni-lj.si ([192.168.5.5]) by localhost (spam.fmf.uni-lj.si [192.168.5.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id pGoenlnhEs+f; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 12:23:30 +0100 (CET) Received: from [193.2.67.88] (unknown [193.2.67.88]) by postar.fmf.uni-lj.si (Postfix) with ESMTP id 006171175B0; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 12:07:38 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <45EFEFB6.2030402@fmf.uni-lj.si> Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:12:54 +0100 From: Andrej Bauer Reply-To: Andrej.Bauer@andrej.com User-Agent: Icedove 1.5.0.9 (X11/20061220) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: caml-list@inria.fr Cc: Jon Harrop Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Interactive technical computing References: <200703080113.22721.jon@ffconsultancy.com> In-Reply-To: <200703080113.22721.jon@ffconsultancy.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-2; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 45EFEE7C.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; andrej:01 andrej:01 ocaml:01 toplevel:01 toplevel:01 overloading:01 ocaml:01 notation:01 violence:98 swallow:98 wrote:01 caml-list:01 symbolic:01 symbolic:01 computation:01 Jon Harrop wrote: > I'd like to hear everyone's opinions on this as, it seems to me, we're sitting > on the foundations of a great technical computing system. I would be very much interested in participating in an effort to develop an interactive environment for ocaml that surpases the currect toplevel. I have in mind a toplevel that can be used *easily* as part of an application, has support for line-editing, fancy typesetting and graphics display. Intelligent pretty-printing would probably be a natural consequence of such desires (so that we graphics is just a fancy pretty printer). As far as symbolic computation and manipulation of mathematical expressions is concerned: I am not sure that overloading operators and doing other kinds of violence to ocaml is the right way to go. It might be better to have instead a specific language for symbolic computation _on top_ of ocaml. The symbolic computation language would swallow the horrible and nasty notation that is used in mathematics, digest it, and pass it on to ocaml. Best regards, Andrej