Edit detail for AxiomBook revision 3 of 3

This is historical entry. For up to date version go to FriCASBook.

Introduction

Since we've decided to make the book available using www.lulu.com's print-on-demand services I've been setting up a way we can work on it.

The clear goal is to have a quality publication.

We'd also like it to remain free-as-in-speech so we're working under the agreement that anything checked into the archive is your own work. You agree that the work is released under the Modified-BSD agreement on the copyright page. Note that this is a license so you actually retain the copyright but agree to allow free copy and distribution. (If there are discussions on this point please post them to the axiom-legal@nongnu.org list and do not copy the other lists).

Process

There is a new way to review and edit the Book drafts on-line. See "Accessing and Updating the Axiom Book Online" below.

How to work on the Axiom book.

From:: Tim Daly Sunday, November 28, 2004 1:48 AM

Changes to the book will be regulary pushed back into the axiom distribution. The two may diverge for a while but will be kept in sync as much as possible.

Credit is free to share and, per policy, is given as generously as possible. If you contribute to the book you should add your name to the list of authors on the front page. Please make sure the front page formats properly.

And, no, you won't make a dime on royalties. I'm one of the original authors and haven't seen money from it. So if you're thinking that this will be an income stream you're mistaken. The funds for this effort, if there are any, are intended to go to the Axiom Foundation (of which I'm not an official member but suspect I have an influence). The idea is to try to pay people to do subprojects from funds that the book generates. Visit

• AxiomFoundation?

It would be nice if we could figure out a way to get lulu.com to either create and ship CDs? with the book or possibly just ship CDs? we make for them. I don't see anything on their site about it but it's always fun to be the first, right?

Cooperate. Don't check in the .tex or .dvi file. Only the book.pamphlet and CHANGELOG file should be modified. Check the pages you've modified and the surrounding pages to see if you've broken anything.

Check the whole book at least once before you send changes back. Minor changes in a page can ripple quite far, especially where graphics images are concerned. Breaking other people's careful work will not earn you bonus points :-)

Note that we'd like the book to be self-contained so try to keep everything in the book.pamphlet file. There are better ways of organizing this but we'll have to debate them before changing this procedure.

To Do List

There are various things that need to be cleaned up.

In general you have to be very careful to edit axiom output so that it line breaks properly. There are numerous examples in the book :-) And don't cheat. Use real axiom output, modulo line breaking issues. You can get most of the way there by typing:

   )set output tex on

to the axiom command prompt. Axiom will output the tex for the expression.

Working with axiom in an emacs shell buffer and the book.pamphlet in a second buffer is very effective. Also remember that if xdvi is visiting a file then it will automatically reflect changes to the .dvi file when it gets focus. Thus if you start xdvi in a separate process you can edit, make, visit xdvi and see the changes quickly.

Chapter 8 needs the graphics work recreated. This involves first solving the problems of getting latex to put more than one image on a page and making the images appear on the pages where they belong.

In order to run the graphics you will need the latest version of axiom. I'll include instructions below.

Chapter 9 could use further examples of domains and packages. If you add to or modify this chapter it would also be useful to send me a .input file with the commands so I can add them to the automated test cases.

Given the size of chapter 9 we might consider splitting the book into two parts, one a users guide and one a reference manual. I leave that up for discussion and debate.

Chapter 10 has drawing function output that need to be included.

Chapter 15 needs revision.

Chapter 16 (aka Chapter 1) should be Appendix 1, similarly with following chapters.

Appendix A and following needs work. The information is there but I have to rewrite the latex commands.

Appendix H has been moved up to the "ISBN" page where it traditionally appears.

The diagrams on the inner covers of the original book should probably become a new chapter that explains these in more detail.

We really could use a chapter on developing Axiom code. Either an analysis of an existing domain or the construction of a new domain with appropriate advice would be excellent. This would be a chance to have your spiffy new domain both contributed and recognized.

Splitting the Book into Volumes

*From:: Tim Daly Sunday, November 28, 2004 2:51 PM

I think we might consider the CD rom as part of the first volume which just does the introduction work (Dunstan's tutorial). From this book the users would be able to install and run Axiom. The CD rom would contain all of the volumes anyway so nothing is lost. We could have this volume out in short order as it just involves cutting down the material and packaging the CD. If we minimize our royalties on this volume we could get the most penetration of the market.

Please check with lulu.com about CD pricing.

A second volume devoted to programming, both interactive and library would be useful. Some work would have to be done to write up more details of the compiler. I expect this is the high profit volume.

A third volume of library reference information. This could be a medium to high profit volume. Most programmers have a "completion mania", meaning they need to have all volumes even if they never use them.

Well, we could always include a coupon in the first book for a free CD. They are not that hard to make.

Accessing and Updating the Axiom Book Online

It is now possible to access and edit the source pamphlet files for the Axiom book volumes on-line throught the web in the same way that other pages on this web site are edited.

At book--main--1 you will see a list of volumes of the draft of new Axiom book. When you click on a volume the first page will be displayed in graphic format. Click on pdf or dvi to access the full document.

If you would like to comment on the text, please type your message at the bottom of the page, the way you would on any other page of this web site.

If you want to make improvements to the text, first you must idendify yourself by clicking preferences and entering your name and email address. Then return to the document page and click edit. You many not edit the source text of the document. When you click Save, the modified text will be automatically processed by Latex and converted to the standard display formats.

Changes made to these draft documents will be periodically reviewed and applied to the final draft versions stored in the archive..

Instructions for Access to Archive

If you already have tla installed skip to the next section.

To get a working tla you can get axiom from the anonymous CVS by:

  mkdir ~/bin                   <-- change ~/bin to someplace writable 
                                    on your path. I have a bin 
  in my homedir
  export CVS_RSH=ssh
  cvs -d:ext:anoncvs@savannah.gnu.org/cvsroot/axiom co 
  axiom/zips/tla-1.1.tar.gz
  cd axiom/zips
  tar -zxf tla-1.1.tar.gz
  cd tla-1.1/src
  mkdir =build
  cd =build
  ../configure --prefix ~/bin   
  make
  make install
  export PATH=~/bin:$PATH

There are later versions of tla on the net but this is sufficient for you to get started.

More details are availabe at ArchUsage?.

Getting started with tla:

Use tla to get the contents of any archive on axiom-developer.org

If you already have set up your tla identity skip to the next section:

  tla my-id "First Last <userid@place.com>"
  tla register-archive arch@axiom-developer.org--axiom 
  http://axiom-developer.org/archive/axiom
  tla my-default-archive arch@axiom-developer.org--axiom

Use tla to get the Book

tla get book--main--1

Building the book

  cd book--main--1*
  make

Note that there are two other commands for make:

   make clean    -- remove the cruft and leave book.dvi and noweb
   make pristine -- remove everything but book.pamphlet changes

Changing the book

To change the book you have three choices. If you do not have write permission to the main book archive, you can still edit the draft volumes as described previous. Or you can send patches as follows::

cp book.pamphlet book.pamphlet.org while edit the book.pamphlet make xdvi book.dvi (until done) diff -Naur book.pamphlet.org book.pamphlet >book.patch mail the book.patch file to daly@idsi.net

(Note that if you type: xdvi book.dvi & then xdvi will continue to run and every time you remake the book it will automatically reflect the changes. This is very useful)

Updating the book directly

You need write access. See http://axiom.axiom-developer.org, follow the [ Developers ]? link, make a key and send me a note.

Follow-up

From: Bill Page Sunday, November 28, 2004 2:01 PM

This is what we have been doing most recently. See especially the discussion about splitting the Axiom book into 3 volumes for publication.

On Sunday, November 28, 2004 1:48 AM Tim Daly wrote:

  It would be nice if we could figure out a way to get lulu.com
  to either create and ship CDs with the book or possibly just
  ship CDs we make for them. I don't see anything on their site
  about it but it's always fun to be the first, right?

Apparently this is quite possible. When asked about his experience with Lulu, Robert Kiehn (an established Lulu author, see my previous email) recently wrote to me:

 Lulu does not print over 700 pages.
 You will need to divide the work into 2 volumes
 The Printing cost paper back is about 4.50 base plus 2 cents
 a page. There are NO up front costs.
 You add on what ever royalty you want.  They get 20% - you
 get 80 % of the royalty that you decide.
 You can design the covers.
 You keep all copyrights.  (meaning that you can quit Lulu
 anytime) You do not have to buy copies from them, they construct
 them on demand and bill the customer for shipping and costs and
 royalties, and send you a check for your 80% of the royalties.
 However, they are now offering hard back copies in print runs
 of over 100.
 You can also add a CD ROM to the fly leaf.
 ***
 I do not think you can get a better deal.

So yes, we can add a copy of Axiom on CDrom? to each book!

Tim wrote:

 Given the size of chapter 9 we might consider splitting the
 book into two parts, one a users guide and one a reference manual.
 I leave that up for discussion and debate.

Yes! I am very much in favour of this idea. I think even the older Jenks and Sutor book was too large for most purposes. Perhaps we could go one step further and further divide the volumes into

• Basic Axiom - a beginning user's guide - Advanced Axiom - user's guide - Axiom Reference - complete reference manual

Besides the page limit that Robert Kiehn mentioned above, another good reason is "marketing". We could plan to keep the Basic Axiom book reasonable short and even lower in price, say < $25. The others could be priced a little higher. Making this division might also let us put something in print sooner.

Lulu Quotation

From:: Kristy via Lulu Support Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:09 PM To:: bill.page1@sympatico.ca Subject:: [lulu.com #49630]? Custom Book+CD/DVD order request for Axiom - Beginners Guide

Bill,

Thank you for your interest and quote request for Lulu's Custom category. As a publishing platform, Lulu offers the ability to publish, print, and distribute a wide variety of books, music, and images. There are NO COSTS to publishing through Lulu.com. Lulu utilizes POD (print-on-demand) technology allows us to bypass several negatives of the traditional publishing world. Lulu eliminates the need for large print runs, warehousing, pre-press costs, and long printing time frames. Additionally, Lulu adds the ability to place orders as small as 1 book, make real time updates and revisions, and keep the control of the book in the hands of the author at all times. We do all of this while providing competitively priced and high quality books.

As Lulu builds on our catalog of options, we are proud to offer hardback books, books with companion CD/DVDs?, and books in alternative trim sizes for orders of 100 or more. Currently, this is a manual process that is handled outside of the Lulu publishing platform. All communication, commerce (Credit Card/Paypal only), and file transfers will be handled by a Lulu representative offline.

Below is your LuluCustom? quote. Please note that included in this quote is a proof of your book. Turnaround time is based on quantity and product, but you can expect a minimum of 2 weeks after final proof has been approved. Lulu offers multiple shipping options, but this can only be estimated after the proof process in order to determine weight and packaging requirements.

Quantity...........100 Price Per Unit....$11.15

Total Cost .......$1,115.00

Please reply to this email with any questions you may have regarding the quote process or Lulu in general. If you are interested in moving forward with this order, we are at your service to help.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Regards,

Kristy LuluCustom? www.lulu.com

Custom Book+CD/DVD order request for Axiom - Beginners Guide:

 Customer Name: Bill Page
 Title: Axiom - Beginners Guide
 Address: 2046 Middle Rd.
 Kingston, Ontario, CANADA, AL  K7L 5H6
 Phone: 613 546 9795
 Date Needed: January 1, 2005
 Quantity 1: 100
 Binding: PerfectBound
 Book Size: 6x9
 Number of Pages: 250?
 Page Printing: BlackAndWhite
 Disc Printing: 1-color
 Disc Packaging: InsideBook
 Shipping Method: Economy

From:: Bill Page Monday, December 06, 2004 4:29 PM

I would like to hear more from subscribers to axiom-developer about our current plans to publish a series of Axiom books on Lulu. Tim Daly has setup the arch repository book--main--1 with 3 volumes:

bookvol1

tutorial

bookvol2

programming

bookvol3

reference

Our goal is to get the Volume 1 out to press in Lulu as soon as possible. 95% of this volume is complete, but it would be great to have more proof reading and corrections by other people.

We were also hoping to include a CDrom with volume 1, but we received a quotation from Lulu which calls for a minimum publishing run of 100 copies at an up front cost of about $1,200 USD for a 250 page volume including a CDrom?. So far the limited donations to the Axiom Foundation would not let us seriously consider this option.

Here is an article about Lulu and publishing open source software:

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/10/2135209

Background

Here is a summary of the first few emails that initiated this project. See the section titled Process below for a detailed discussion of the process that we plan to use to produce the final draft publication.

From:

  Bill Page
  Thursday, November 25, 2004 8:04 PM

Have you heard about Lulu, the new "print on demand" book publishers? They are for real and quite serious. I have a friend who is publishing some very serious physics monographs this way. Just to get an idea, see his books here:

http://people.lulu.com/users/index.php?fHomepage=42530

See more about Lulu at the end of this email.

Anyway, so here is my idea:

I think the Axiom Foundation should publish the book that Tim Daly has recently finished updating and revising: AXIOM - The 30 Year Horizon

This book is the essential replacement for the original book: "AXIOM - The Scientific Computation System" by Richard Jenks and Robert Sutor and published by the Numerical Algorithms Group, in Springer-Verlag, (c) 1992.

The new book weighs in at over 1000 pages and a dauntingly big download and print job of anyone! But Lulu to the rescue... Now anyone can order a convenient printed copy of the book for a very reasonable price.

The Axiom Foundation (with Tim's and possibly NAG's approval of course) could offer the new book for sale through Lulu. Profits from the sale of the book could go to help fund the Axiom Foundation initiatives that we have only just begun to consider such as Bounty incentives for Axiom development work.

Based on the cost and commission figures at: http://www.lulu.com/static/on-demand-books2.php

I think that setting a price of say $50 per book (quantity 1) could yield a net royalty of about $20 for each book sold. This could help promote Axiom is more than one way at the same time.

Now, that is not all! Lulu now also sells software. (See more below.)

So, the Foundation could also use Lulu to offer Axiom CDrom? "boxed sets" for end-user installation. Ok, so maybe that is a bit premature right now, but I think we will get to that stage pretty soon now.

(Does all this sound like a "too-good-to-be-true" sales pitch? maybe I am getting just a little too enthusiastic, but I do think that this might work.

References:

• http://www.lulu.com/static/pr/11_03.php
• http://www.lulu.com/static/on-demand-books1.php

From:

  Page, Bill
  Friday, November 26, 2004 9:47 AM

Members, et al.

Ok in my official capacity as Secretary to the Foundation, since both Tim Daly and NAG (aka Mike Dewar) apparently agree to the idea of publishing the new Axiom book at http://www.lulu.com , I would like to seek approval from the members of the Axiom Foundation to proceed with making the necessary arrangements.

Would the members please let me know at least positive or negative as soon as you get a chance? Thanks.

... And of course I was wondering if there were any volunteers who would like to step forward to help me with doing this? :))

One issue that will have to be decided is what price to attach to the sale of the book. I did a quick calculation based on a size of 1000 pages and a royalty of $20 based on the information at

• http://www.lulu.com/static/on-demand-books2.php

and I got a price of just under $50 per single copy. The Foundation would recieve $20 from each sale. Does that sound reasonable? Do you think I did the calculation correctly?

From:

  Mike Dewar
  On Friday, November 26, 2004 5:17 AM

I don't think that NAG would object, provided that the terms of the license were complied with (which is only that the copyright notices and license text appear in the book, e.g. on the same page as the Library of Congress/ISBN metadata).

I would also hope that the original contributors, particularly the principle authors Dick Jenks and Bob Sutor, were acknowledged in an appropriate way.

From:

  Tim Daly wrote:
  On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 09:15:32PM -0500

Not a bad idea, actually.

The book is partially composed of text released under the Modifed-BSD license, partially composed of some text by Martin Dunstan (the tutorial), who gave me permission to use and freely republish it under the Modified-BSD.

The picture on the front (Blue Bayou) is by Jocelyn Guidry (http://www.jocelynguidry.com) and I have her permission to freely distribute it under the Modified-BSD.

The rest of the text, including composing it into tex, typesetting the equations, etc. was written by me and I give the same permission to use work under the Modified-BSD.

Of course, the graphics chapter needs work as does the cross reference information in the back. There is no such thing as a simple job.

Perhaps we could even cut a deal with the cheap CD place to include a CD with Axiom on it.

From:

  Bill Page
  Friday, November 26, 2004 11:15 AM

One thing we should seriously consider I think is to purchase an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) for the new Axiom book. See:

http://www.lulu.com/services/isbn.php

This is important because I can seriously imagine that some universities might be interested in using the Axiom book in a course on Computer Algebra and although the book will still be available for free downloading I expect that most university book stores would prefer to be able to order copies of the book through the usual channels.

What do you think?

From:

  Tim Daly
  Friday, November 26, 2004 5:22 PM

I read the ISBN section and it seems reasonable. Before we order one we should probably be sure we have a printable book worth buying.

Some work needs to be applied to make the book "publication ready". I'll create a axiom--book--1 branch so we can work on it.

We need to :

• know what format they accept
• look at how cover art
• work on an index
• work on chapter 8 (graphics)
• work on the algebra reference information

From:

  Tim Daly
  Friday, November 26, 2004 5:28 PM

There isn't an ISBN/Metadata page at the moment but there will be. We'll add the license terms there as well as a statement that copyright resides with the original holders (rather redundant but why not?).

Currently all of the original authors are listed on the cover, plus Martin Dunstan (the tutorial section) and Jocelyn Guidry (the artist).

It's been policy to give credit to all contributors so any additional people who work on the book would be added to that list.

From:

  Martin Rubey
  Saturday, November 27, 2004 7:53 AM

I also think that we shouldn't hurry here. Two questions:

• How much will the publishing cost. (Or is there really only a per book price?
• How long does the publishing process take? I assume that the book won't be ready for Christmas, even if we hurry now :-)

Maybe it would be sensible to have the book published just in time with axiom 1.0. In this case advertising would be more efficient, probably.

From:

  Arthur Norman
  Saturday, November 27, 2004 3:55 PM

I would imagine that if one attaches an ISBN to a document then that document must be considered TOTALLY FROZEN, so otherwise the ISBN would not be a useful unique identification. I would certainly feel upset if I told my students what book to buy and went to the trouble of telling them what ISBN to check for and found that what they bought differed in even the most minor way (eg pagination) from the version I based any of my course handouts on. So I think you will all need to decide just how stable the book wants to be how soon... oe whether people will want to keep adding in updates and improvements...

From:: Martin Rubey Saturday, November 27, 2004 7:53 AM

I also think that we shouldn't hurry here. Two questions:

• How much will the publishing cost. (Or is there really only a per book price?)

There is only a per book price (except if includes CDrom? or hardcover)

• How long does the publishing process take? I assume that the book won't be ready for Christmas, even if we hurry now :-)

I think approval can take less than 1 month once we are happy with the draft

Maybe it would be sensible to have the book published just in time with axiom 1.0. In this case advertising would be more efficient, probably.

From:: C Y Saturday, November 27, 2004 3:23 PM

Exciting stuff! I for one would probably be interested in buying a copy of the book as opposed to printing one, and I agree an ISBN number and the possibility of printing the book as a textbook seem like good ideas. When you say work on index, how much work is needed? That's one thing even TeX couldn't automate, and I've never figured out how to tell when I'm done indexing something.

From:: Arthur Norman Saturday, November 27, 2004 3:55 PM

I would imagine that if one attaches an ISBN to a document then that document must be considered TOTALLY FROZEN, so otherwise the ISBN would not be a useful unique identification. I would certainly feel upset if I told my students what book to buy and went to the trouble of telling them what ISBN to check for and found that what they bought differed in even the most minor way (eg pagination) from the version I based any of my course handouts on. So I think you will all need to decide just how stable the book wants to be how soon... oe whether people will want to keep adding in updates and improvements...

From:: Tim Daly Saturday, November 27, 2004 10:58 PM

Good point. However Axiom is a moving target and it is reasonable to issue both "printing with corrections" provided they are not too frequent and "second edition" versions at regular intervals. Both things happen without notice now as I have textbooks that have added corrections as well as "fourth editions" of several books. Indeed, my college calc text must be up to its 75th edition by now :-)

I don't know that the ISBN numbering system will allow you to order a particular edition. I know that my copy of K&R is half the thickness of the currently published version but I believe they share ISBNs?.

Personally I'd rather have an up-to-the-minute edition rather than one with known errors or missing chapters. This was not possible before print on demand.

However, I can see your point about student editions differing from last years edition. One could argue that your bookstore should order you a new edition every semester if required. As a professor I've actually taught from pre-prints (e.g. the famous Lyons Unix book and a book on Lisp internals) and I've even had profs inflict their own notes on me instead of a textbook.

Good luck

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 19:36:45 -0600 reply