Slight error in the Fricas book

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Neven Sajko

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Oct 28, 2020, 1:39:54 PM10/28/20
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Hello,

In https://fricas.github.io/book.pdf on page 79 in section 2.1.1, it
is said that "The result is appropriately stated to be of type
Domain". This refers to entering "Polynomial(Integer)" into the Fricas
interpreter. However the actual type as reported by Fricas is not
"Domain", but rather "Type". This is reflected in both the Fricas
generated entry in the book and the actual and up to date Fricas
interpreter from Git master.

This does not seem like a big mistake, but it could be confusing and
off-putting to beginners that are only getting introduced to Fricas
with the help of the Fricas book.

Regards,
Neven Sajko

Ralf Hemmecke

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Oct 28, 2020, 2:37:11 PM10/28/20
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Thanks. That will be fixed in the new release.

If you want to see your name in the git log, then provide a patch
otherwise I will commit tomorrow.

Ralf

Neven Sajko

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Oct 28, 2020, 3:48:22 PM10/28/20
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Hello Ralf,

Well, I could just replace "Domain" with "Type" in the appropriate
place, but I'm afraid I am not able to fix the book with an
appropriate clarifying comment, as I don't know anything about the
exact relation between the Fricas type "Type" and Fricas domains, or
the history of the "Domain" type (I guess it was removed from
Fricas?).

Neven

Ralf Hemmecke

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Oct 28, 2020, 5:23:14 PM10/28/20
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Oh, right. I first thought that "Domain" never existed, but that
seemingly only applied to the Aldor language.

The original AXIOM Book be Jenks and Sutor mentions "Type: Domain" as a
result type for "Polynomial Integer" in this place.

Would have been nice if this were still the case, but obviously, it is
gone from the code. Maybe just from printing it, because I am not aware
of the fact that an actual type "Domain" (which would have to be a
category) ever existed.

Waldek, do you remember details here?

Ralf

Waldek Hebisch

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Oct 28, 2020, 5:37:47 PM10/28/20
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On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 10:23:11PM +0100, Ralf Hemmecke wrote:
> Oh, right. I first thought that "Domain" never existed, but that
> seemingly only applied to the Aldor language.
>
> The original AXIOM Book be Jenks and Sutor mentions "Type: Domain" as a
> result type for "Polynomial Integer" in this place.
>
> Would have been nice if this were still the case, but obviously, it is
> gone from the code. Maybe just from printing it, because I am not aware
> of the fact that an actual type "Domain" (which would have to be a
> category) ever existed.
>
> Waldek, do you remember details here?

Well, we have this thing called ChangeLog:

2009-12-04 Waldek Hebisch <heb...@math.uni.wroc.pl>

* src/interp/trace.boot, src/interp/i-analy.boot,
src/interp/buildom.boot, src/interp/i-coerce.boot,
src/interp/parse.boot, src/interp/i-output.boot,
src/interp/i-spec2.boot, src/interp/g-cndata.boot,
src/interp/setq.lisp, src/interp/i-funsel.boot,
src/interp/i-eval.boot, src/interp/br-con.boot,
src/interp/i-spec1.boot, src/interp/clammed.boot:
Replace 'Domain' by 'Type' and 'Subdomain(Domain)'
by 'Category'.

And there was discussion in the mailing list.

All references type 'Domain' is documentation should be
replaced by 'Type'. But 'Domain' is used quite a lot
with different meaning so it is hard to search for and
some erroneous reference my still remain...

--
Waldek Hebisch
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