Re: Math-engines, Mathematica, Maple or ...

On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 02:29:45PM +0200, Morten Andersen wrote:
> I'm working on a system, that involves a browser-based frontend with 
> mathematics support.
> I would like to make it possible to use mathematic-engines like 
> Mathematica, but their license restrictions are very strict, so I'm trying 
> to figure out what engines that there is out there.
> 
> The engine must be able to:
>    * Do symbolic calculations
>    * Make plots
>    * Do numerical calculations
> 
> The license restrictions must make it possible to do some calculations over 
> the internet.
> 
> What engines are there, how good are they and how strict are their license 
> policies?
> 
> Is there some open-source projects..?

There is GNU TeXmacs, an interactive typesetting system which can work
as a user interface for a number of CAS and plotting softwares. The
plugins included in the distribution are:

  axiom, gnuplot, gtybalt, maple, maxima, pari, r, scilab, giac,
  graphviz, macaulay2, mathemagix, mupad, octave, qcl, reduce, yacas.

I have also heard that Matlab people are developping a texmacs plugin
of their own.

TeXmacs is a GNU project and licensed under the GPL.

It is not yet possible to "make computations over the internet" (the
CAS has to be installed on the same machine as TeXmacs) but TeXmacs
can be used as a web browser. The HTML conversion abilities are being
improved and there is already a sketchy support for MathML
presentation. In case you want more math, you can use just browse on
native texmacs documents over HTTP.

The UNIX version is pretty mature and there is a contributed
experimental Windows port.

-- 
David Allouche         | GNU TeXmacs -- Writing is a pleasure
Free software engineer |    http://www.texmacs.org
   http://ddaa.net     |    http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/texmacs
   david@allouche.net  |    allouche@texmacs.org
TeXmacs is NOT a LaTeX front-end and is unrelated to emacs.

Received on Tuesday, 22 July 2003 05:17:45 UTC