On May 13, 2007 7:34 PM Waldek Hebisch wrote: > > Tim Daly wrote: > > ... > > The interpreter is gradually moving into bookvol5 and the > > compiler will eventually move into bookvol6. Hyperdoc is > > bookvol7 and graphics is bookvol8. What remains after the > > tree is walked must either contain a new root or dead code. > > > > IIRC bookvol5 also contains dead code. And frankly, concerning > readability I find bookvol5 worse than rest of the interpreter. >
I agree. Tim's "bookvol5" looked like a bad idea to me 18 months ago http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2005-11/msg00104.html http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2005-10/msg00397.html and it looks even worse now. The concept of grouping code and documentation into "book-sized" volumes does not make any sense. A monolithic linear presentation of the code does not aid an overall understanding of the system. On the contrary it makes several things harder to manage and moves the system further away from the tools that have been developed specifically to deal with large complicated projects. I am all in favour of adding more documentation to Axiom and doing it in a literate style, but I am quite sure that this is not the way to do it. I am very encouraged however by the work of both Waldek and Gaby to improve the build process and to improve the long term maintainability of the Axiom code in it's current form without the kind re-writing and restructuring in which Tim has been indulging. And I must repeat again that I am even happier that they have a strong interest in Boot and have already taken some steps in the direction that seemed to be the intention of the original developers - integrating the new boot compiler (shoe). I would like to see the retrogressive code changes from Boot to Lisp that Tim introduced in bookvol5 reversed. With the prospect that Boot can now be fully documented and properly maintained, if there is any re-writing to be done, then I think it is in the opposite direction - from Lisp to Boot. Regards, Bill Page. _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
