Re: [Maxima-discuss] Qepmax package: interface to Qepcad

[Robert D. <rob...@gm...>]

On 2014-04-17, Richard Fateman <fa...@be...> wrote:

> It may be that SAC-2 is much more efficient in all of these things
> than Maxima, but that is not at all guaranteed.   It could be that
> the essential part of QEPcad B can be coded in Maxima's language,
> or coded in Lisp, in a few pages, given that Maxima already
> has most of the major components.

That's an interesting idea. I glanced at the QEPCAD B source code
and SAClib as well. SAClib is a C++ library and QEPCAD is a C++
program which uses it. SAClib has a lot of functions which are in
Maxima, in particular stuff for manipulating polynomials. It seems
plausible that SAClib could be reimplemented to punt to Maxima
(although as usual probably the last 10% would take forever).
Then presumably QEPCAD itself would have to be translated to 
Maxima, although maybe that could be automated by parsing the C++
code and emitting equivalent Maxima expressions ... just daydreaming.

Since all that stuff is C++, it is susceptible to Lisp FFI. Doubtless
that's more efficient that calling it as an external program.

best

Robert Dodier