Re: Literate Programming, Axiom, and Physically Based Rendering

[Tim Daly]

Despite the outline of my attempts at funding I haven't spent a lot of time on it.

Money has never been a motivation. I did get research funding at City College

for "indefinite integers" but "the team" simply dissolved, likely due to my lack

of leadership skills.

I have two areas of focus for Axiom, community and research.

One focus is to "make Axiom live", hence the focus on literate programming.

I contacted the Physically Based Rendering authors and they gave me a

copy of their tools for creating their literate document. Unfortunately, Axiom

is an order of magnitude bigger than PBR so it makes no sense to print it out.

Instead I've concentrated on things like collecting published papers, adding

bibliographic references to the algorithms, improving the documentation, etc.

in an attempt to gather and explain the details, internals, and design decisions.

I don't have any leadership skills. The community went elsewhere.

The other focus is "make Axiom correct", hence the focus on merging proof tech.

"Correct" is a specification issue. I now prefer the term "sane", which has

synonyms "rational", "coherent", "judicious", and "sound". This particular

journey tries to merge the computer algebra and proof technology into

"computational mathematics". This is also showing my lack of leadership.

The proof community, according to private emails I've received, is actively

hostile to the idea of proving programs correct (although they did prove

Buchberger's algorithm, for example). The computer algebra community

has shown no interest in proving algorithms correct. Nevertheless, my

effort at merging the two is making progress.

I'm doing research and I'm having fun. Life is good.

Tim

On Mon, Apr 3, 2023 at 6:32 AM Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.com> wrote:

Dear Tim,

On Sun, Apr 2, 2023 at 5:35 PM Tim Daly <axiomcas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Moving forward with Axiom is going to be hard, and will probably have
> > to require some new people to get involved.  That is best served with
> > financial or other incentives, but I have no suggestions on how to
> > achieve that goal.
>
> I have contacted about a dozen companies for grant money.
>
> I have contacted several grant-generating organizations.
>
> I set up a "contribute to Axiom" account of which I was the only contributor.
>
> I have contacted NSF and DARPA.
>
> The only support Axiom had was from Gilbert Baumslag at City College
> of New York. I worked with Gilbert in his Infinite Theory Group at CAISS.
> He supported the initial effort to make Axiom run standalone (the NAG
> version required a running Axiom to create a new Axiom).
>
> One of the key issues is managing the funding. That requires someone
> to hold the funds, manage the receipts, and pay the taxes. That is, it
> requires an independent accountant. NSF and DARPA usually give funds
> to a University office to manage. No accountants, no grant money.

Yeah.  I have thought about this for other similar preservation
efforts, and hence I will not personally do much for Axiom, except
perhaps buy an updated tutorial.

There are options now, like Patreon, SubscribeStar, and things I
haven't even heard of.  Afaict, the successful efforts on those lines
are the ones that provide entertainment, though possibly in the form
of "training material."  I believe that's how people start on YouTube,
but I'll admit some ignorance about how well that works.

And once you go that route, your main "job" is to get funding, and to
get that funding you end up "entertaining" your audience.

Which means you aren't spending your time writing about Axiom internals.

Now, to refer to something /I/ like in a similar fashion, is the
LibTomMath internals book, available here:

  https://github.com/libtom/libtommath/releases/tag/v1.1.0

The file tommath-1.1.0.pdf.

Note this is the last release of that book, since the book has been
removed from the repository.

  https://github.com/libtom/libtommath/commit/17ca193fa70890033b35625ca44041c51171b50a

Still, now that I know about it, I /might/ resurrect it; but I have no
time frame for it.

The reason I like this book, is that as far as I've read it, it's all
about teaching the reader how to make a multi-precision library.
Although I would probably not make the same technical decisions Tom
did.  I could use it as a base for my own work; we'll see.

> I contacted several companies asking them to set up a small 1 or 2 person
> accounting shop for open source projects to accept and manage grants.
>
> So over the last 20 years no attempt at funding succeeded.

The open source world has changed /slightly/ to the better in the past
few years, but there's still a lot to do, to get funding for our
efforts.

I have no concrete suggestions for you, nor do I think it's my place
to do so, even if I had.

> Over those 20 years I averaged about $3000 per year of Axiom related
> costs such as equipment, online hosting, travel for presentations, and
> Axiom-related swag (e.g. coffee mugs), all out of personal funds. That
> figure does not include my time.

Yeah.  And as I alluded to above, once you start on the funding route,
you're basically committed to that instead of writing.

That is the reality of it.

--
Johann

 I'm not from the internet, I just work there.