Ted and Bill, It would help if someone (hopefully someone with a better knowledge of Lisp than me) were to port to a JVM language like this and then the SPAD language were modified slightly so that native JVM libraries could be called from SPAD.
Let me give an example of where this would help: I have written an alternative geometry/graphics framework based on a scenegraph written in SPAD, this has all the same draw/plot features as the existing framework but with much more powerful transforms and so on. In some ways I'm quite pleased with it, it exports to SVG, X3D, VRML & OBJ. However the point is that, if I had access to JVM libraries such as an OpenGL canvas, ability to read XML, and things like this I could make it much more powerful, the user could interact with the program. Without these things I am stuck and I can't see a way to develop it further. The other issue with programming in SPAD is that I find it extremely frustrating. I am not doubting its power, or the work that has gone into it over the years but the lack of helpful error messages and so on make it very hard to work with. Every time I hit a hard to find bug in my SPAD code I vow to stop using this language but I come back to it in the end. Moving the Lisp code to ABCL would not immediately fix that (I guess it could even add some bugs of its own) but would it give a path to an environment that is easier to program in? Can you see how this could be done in simple steps without requiring a massive programming effort? Martin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FriCAS - computer algebra system" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/fricas-devel?hl=en.
