[om] Re: library

[Richard Fateman]

I am pleased to hear that someone thinks the NIST project
is making good progress, and I am pleased to hear that
Bruce Miller may be providing something useful.  My impression
is that the NIST project consists primarily of redoing
Abramowitz and Stegun in TeX with whatever new math might
be appropriate, but with technology firmly based in
conventional batch processing circa 1985 or so.
 There is a special functions project at Wolfram
Research which has its own problems, but there are
also projects like the Gradshteyn and Rhyzik redo by
Daniel Zwillinger, and the Maple-aware CRC compact
disk. 
  Why not have one of your well-meaning contributors
write up a review of what all of these people are
doing, instead of proceeding apace on their own
independent projects. 
  Frankly, if anyone were doing the technology right,
translating from one unambiguous notation to another,
appropriately changing signs, multiplying by pi/2 etc
as necessary, then all the information could be
held in some common repository.
  I am more confident in Zwillinger than in anything
else I've seen, being based on a macro language which
can alternatively be expanded into TeX or Mathematica.

Who else among you has looked at it or talked with
Zwillinger?   
  Since he is not European, I cynically assume he
could not possibly be of interest to OM, which is
working with European Mathematics.  But maybe I
am wrong?
  Regards as always,
    Richard Fateman



Mike Dewar wrote:
> 
> > I know that Bill Naylor is working on the special functions
> > CD. Since the AMS55 (Abraham/Stegun) on line project is making
> > good progress, and since editors involved are perfectly
> > willing to align with OpenMath, but not doing the work,
> > it seems to make good sense to contact the editors,
> > e.g. Ron Boisvelt.
> I met Bill a few weeks ago at the University of Western Ontario and
> he is indeed working on their existing Special Functions CD and
> bringing it into line with the latest OpenMath standard, as well as
> investigating the automatic generation of XSL stylesheets from CDs (by
> adding a "notation" element to the CD).  Maybe he can post something
> about that at some point.
> 
> The other people who had special functions CDs were the group at Nice.
> I don't think I ever saw it but from what other people said I think it
> was organised into several CDs and made better use of genericity than
> the Western one.  It now appears that we have a third CD from Bruce Miller.
> 
> The other "ingredient" to the special functions debate was the paper on
> branch cuts which James Davenport and the Western group wrote while James
> was on sabbatical there.  A version of this appeared in the SIGSAM bulletin
> but we could probably make the original report available online if people
> are interested.
> 
> Maybe the people involved could send snapshots of their current CDs to
> the list.  I could also put them on the website and, provided that they
> conform to the standard, run them through David's XSL stylesheet so that
> they are a bit more readable.
> 
> > Indeed, a CD that can be demonstrated by means of a phrasebook
> > is much easier to check than one without. We at Eindhoven
> > are quite interested in extending our Mathematica Phrasebook
> > with such a CD.
> I'm not sure that I agree with this since there is a danger that you end
> up checking that the semantics of the CD support the phrasebook rather
> than the other way round.  In an ideal world you would both check the
> mathematical soundness of a CD and demonstrate that it could be
> implemented in a variety of phrasebooks (rather like the procedure for a
> W3C recommendation), but I think that that is too heavy-weight a process
> for CDs.
> 
> > As for the polynomial CD, the group CD, the algebra (rings and algebras) CD,
> > etc., I have no clue as to who is active on this area right now.
> > Does anyone have suggestions?
> I met James at the end of April and we discussed what to do about the
> polynomial CDs.  We agreed on a suitable person to referee them, but I
> haven't heard anything since.  James?
> 
> Regards, Mike.
> 
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