Maybe the OpenAxiom list is an appropriate place to discuss foundational issues like this since it seems to have lesser priority in other variants of Axiom.
One thing that has bothered me a bit lately when writing Axiom code is the use of elt and/or apply to "simulate" a domain which in my opinion really ought to inherit such properties from some category to which Mapping should also belong, call it MapCat or some such. The main idea is that members of some domain, aside from other properties, behave like functions. There is a concept of "evaluation", i.e. applying a function f (as a member of this domain) to members of some other domain to yield a member form a third domain. E.g. f in Mapping(B,A) Then we could write MyFunDom(): Join(MapCat(B,A), ...) == and if R has MapCat(B,A) then ... etc. Gaby, I recall that some time ago you made some changes to the way OpenAxiom compiles Mapping, perhaps in this direction?. Are there plans to do further work on this? Do you see any way to reduce the amount of adhocracy in how this is done in Axiom? Maybe MapCat or equiv. should export apply? Does it make sense that another similar function 'elt' exists and has similar semantics? Bill Page. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fulfilling the Lean Software Promise Lean software platforms are now widely adopted and the benefits have been demonstrated beyond question. Learn why your peers are replacing JEE containers with lightweight application servers - and what you can gain from the move. http://p.sf.net/sfu/vmware-sfemails _______________________________________________ open-axiom-devel mailing list open-axiom-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/open-axiom-devel
