I develop CoCoA (an open source Computer Algebra System in C++) with a textual interface. It was relatively easy to write a nice Emacs interface for this textual binary: we defined the syntax for our programming language, and how to send commands from a text file to another window with the running binary.
We also have a dedicated opern source Qt interface, but it is too hard for us (mathematicians!) to develop and maintain it.
Personally I like and use the Emacs interface, but I see from our download logs that users prefer to download the GUI even though it actually does less and is not documented!!!
It would be nice to have an "empty graphical interface" (in Qt? or a "subset" of Emacs?) allowing basic editing and running a process, but I cannot find one.
I have to explain better: CoCoA is a CAS with its own programming language. It is distributed as a C++ library, and also as a system with binaries for MacOS, Linux, Windows all with both a textual interface and with a graphical interface (based on Qt + QCodeEdit). That makes a lot of compilations for each release!
[http://cocoa.dima.unige.it/download/RelNotes.html]
The textual executable (what I called "binary") can be executed (as any executable) within Emacs, thus getting editing features "for free". Moreover it was relatively easy to define a "cocoa5-mode" for editing and executing text files written in CoCoA-5 language. That's perfect... for me.
Many users are just scared of the word "Emacs" and download the GUI version of CoCoA instead (which has fewer features). I think that the best solution would be to package together Emacs+CoCoA into a single downloadable binary which appears to work as a single binary, but I find that's a bit excessive. So I meant to ask if there is a standalone binary distributed by someone else (not by me ;-) which provides:
I have tried TeXmacs, but that gives a different kind of interface (similar to wxmaxima) and no coloured syntax, and I think Sage notebooks might be similar.
Yes, Fernando, we have that and works beautifully. I was just wondering whether I should find out how to "wrap it up" and distribute a single "Emacs+CoCoA" executable and call it "GUI" ;-)
@Jaime Thanks for sharing atom.io, looks great.
Some of my co-workers extended Brackets for their work http://brackets.io The advantage of being Javascript-based is that you don't need to worry about cross-platform binaries.
Florian
Thank you for all your suggestions: I'm having a look at Atom and Brackets.
Yes, I want to run a window with text input and display talking to it via a pseudo-tty. We have a "proper" Qt interface, but we are no longer able to maintain (no volunteers, no money, no time): my work is Computer Algebra!
Hi Anna,
Have a look at Jupyter. This is a notebook-based GUI running in the web browser. It is originally designed for Python but provided an API for connecting other "languages." Maxima already have linked to Jupyter, and I am considering this for Reduce.
http://jupyter.org
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