[om] Reference vs. Referent: solution to an old problem

[Richard Fateman]

I missed the additional transmittal of "referent" in the OM datum
transmitted.  
I still think it would be a foolish path to define all CAS results
as though there were only one answer.

If you want to have referents that refer to particular CAS commands
in particular CAS systems, e.g. maple-factor or mathematica-factor,
you might be OK.

e.g. Mathematica-referent(x+1) = (1+x)
     Maple-reference (z1+w3+x1) =  unordered sum of 3 items..

     and of course all the buggy commands would return whatever
erroneous results are computed, rather than the openmath referent.

I wrote a paper on evaluation in CAS, published in some ISSAC
conference, on my web page, and also published in Mike Wester's
recent Computer Algebra book.  If you think eval (probably the
"simplest" command in most CAS) is simple, and that it is
somehow the same and appropriately defined by an OM CD, then
I suggest you look at that paper.
 RJF
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