[om] DefMP elements

[Bruce Miller]

Jacques Carette wrote:
> On the multiple facets of sin:  could one instead use trig1, trig2, trig3,
> ...., trig10 CDs, each with different syntactic FMPs (and correspondingly
> different used CDs) to build 'equivalent' systems?  One for high-school
> definitions, one for the exp definition, one for the series definition, etc,
> etc. I understood that to be the original OM design of having multiple CDs.
> Each OM application could then use the 'right' CD and not worry about math
> it does not know (or want).

But the catch there, is that the _generating_ application has to choose the
CD's according to the destination application.  If it's doing that, it
may as well just write maple/mathematica code or whatever.

Here's another terminology: C macros vs Lisp macros :>

But seriously, I can see the application of James's more restrictive
FMPs.  However, I can't see that a single simple FMP for a symbol would cover
all the weaker applications that might benefit from such substitutions.
Is it feasable to provide multiple simple-FMP's and expect the application
to choose the one that substitutes in terms of symbols that it does know?

Alternatively, maybe I don't agree after all. Isn't it a phrasebook issue?
If an application claims to understand a given CD, then isn't it responsible
for recognizing all the symbols in that CD? --- possibly by substituting
in a way that is optimal for itself.
A more useful, but non-trivial, object would be to map the symbols of a
CD that an application does not understand into symbols that it does.
[Earlier in OM there was a notion of 2 applications negotiating the set 
of understood CD's --- not sure what the status of that concept is]


> This does not necessarily obviate the need to alternate FMPs in some CDs,
> but it would lessen it.  It might introduce a fair amount of ugly
> duplication, but that would be a different problem to solve via other means.
> 
> Jacques
> 
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-- 
bruce.miller at nist.gov
http://math.nist.gov/~BMiller/

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