1.Context and objectives

Symbolic computation is usually associated with computer algebra systems such as Maple or Mathematica. These softwares are commercial products, with large communities of users (several millions of users). They provide an interpreter of commands, connected to a huge library of functionalities. Their development started more than twenty years ago and evolved from academic projects into large software companies. The connection with the academic domain made it possible to integrate new algorithmic contributions from researchers, whereas the software company effort concentrated on graphical user interface developments. Concerning numerical computation, Matlab is having a similar position, as a commercial product with a large community of users, also integrating academic contributions.

Though these softwares are equipped with high level programming languages, their interpreters suffer from efficiency, especially when it comes to dedicated and optimized computations. For this reason, several special purpose C/C++ libraries have been developed, which have become increasingly powerful for solving the tasks they were designed for (Gmp, Mpfr, Pari, Ntl, Macaulay, Singular, Cocoa, Fgb, etc.). In numerical computation, a similar evolution took place, starting with the reference library Lapack. Some of these systems are equipped with their own interpreter and a corresponding programming language. Others are designed as libraries which can be linked to high level applications.

Another approach to tackle the efficiency problem while implementing new functionalities, adopted by Axiom (and Aldor) is to provide a compiler with the system, which allows to produce more efficient code, that can be linked with the interpreter or used independently.

In the recent years, we observed a new phenomena, with the appearance of general purpose open source software such as Maxima, Axiom, Octave, Scilab, etc. Another new free software sage, based its evolution on the capability to integrate different existing packages, while providing an easy-to-use and homogeneous framework for command evaluation and extension of the functionalities. For this purpose the choice of Python as an extension language was natural. The integration of external free packages was also observed in commercial software such as Maple, which incorporates for instance Gmp, Mpfr or Lapack.

The main goals of the Mathemagix project are:

• to provide a coherent framework for the development and publication of efficient and stand-alone packages;

• to provide packages, which implement in a very efficient way the basic operations needed in algebraic and numeric computation;

• to provide tools for the connection of these packages to other interpreters, in particular to the Mathemagix interpreter, or to other applications;

• to provide a high-level programming language, adapted to mathematical computation, an interpreter and a compiler;

• to provide high level user interfaces, based on external tools such as TeXmacs and Axel.

These goals are motivated by the will to develop implementations that can be freely reused by the community, the need to build efficient software based on stable and strong algorithmic foundations, the variety of environments in which this implementation can be used, but also the lack of sufficiently general compiled computer algebra languages and the increasing request for using free computer algebra systems in our scientific activities.

2.Platform architecture

To achieve modularity and scalability, Mathemagix is organized as a collection of packages with dag-like dependencies. Each of them provides a C++ interface for gluing some of its functionalities to the Mathemagix interpreter. It can also provide code written in the Mathemagix language, or gluing code for the interaction with other applications such as Axel.

A package is a library in the usual sense. It is devoted to a domain of computation. To fit with the global architecture, its structure should follow a certain template: The header files of a package (say pkg) are found in include/pkg; the source files are found in src, the macros for the configuration step are found in macros, the files for the connection with the interpreter are in glue, the files for the interpreter in mmx, the file used for the construction steps are in build, and so on. The interpreter and compiler of the language are provided by the packages mmxlight and mathemagix, following this structure. They can be built and used independently of most of the other packages.

To manage the collection of packages, we use a tool called automagix. For each package, it can generate the list of headers files, or source files needed to construct the different libraries and produce the corresponding makefiles (build/Makefile.am). It can also generate the configuration files (configure.ac) taking into account the dependency with other packages following the Mathemagix structure or with external libraries. Its behavior is specified by the file specif/pkg.amx. The tool automagix also produces a global configuration and makefile to configure and to build all the packages in an order compatible with their dependencies. It also passes the different options for the construction of the packages. This tool is written in the Mathemagix language, using its interpreter. It generates tools which are compatible with the autotools suite, in order to get portable and standalone configuration tools.

To generate automatically the glue for the interpreter, the tool autoglue (also written in the Mathemagix language) can be used. It takes the Mathemagix files (.mmx) of the directory glue and produces the corresponding C++ files (.cpp) for the glue. A Mathemagix glue file contains a dictionary between the functions imported in the interpreter, described by their signatures, and the corresponding C++ functions. Signatures with type parameters (templates in C++) are allowed. The gluing C++ code of a function is generated if all the types involved in its signature are specialized (using the keyword specialize). The generated cpp files can then be compiled and assembled in a dynamic library libmmxpkg.[so,dyl,…] (automatically via automagix). All the functions specialized in this glue library can then be used in the interpreter via the command: use "pkg".

3.Packages

Most of the code of the packages is written in C++, the other part behind mainly written in the Mathemagix language. The current list of packages represents about 200,000 effective lines of code. This list of packages is in constant evolution. We list here the main ones:

basix

This package contains the basics, that is data structures for symbols, lists, arrays, hash tables, etc. It also provides a system for generic objects. Parsers and pretty printers, together with a system for keeping track of locations in the source code and generating error messages are also available there. Important operators for systematic use throughout the project and the glue facility, both for interpreters and functionality can also be found in this package.

numerix

It provides a C++ interface for extended arithmetic over integer, rational numbers based Gmp and over floating numbers based on Mpfr. Complexified version of these types are also provided as well intervals and balls for certified arithmetic. Modular numbers with preinverse computation, … are also provided in this package.

algebramix

This package aims to provide basic routines on univariate polynomials, series and matrices with state-of-the-art asymptotic time complexities.

Mmx]	bit_precision := 128; z: Series Floating == series (0, 1);

Mmx]	exp (exp z - 1) [25000] compute for

Computed in 11582 ms

multimix

This package is dedicated to transseries and optimize computation on dense multivariate polynomials and series.

analyziz

This package contains tools for effective analytic computation, including analytic continuation and manipulation of effective analytic functions.

columbus

Visualization tool for analytic functions. Below, we have displayed the solutions to two numerically unstable differential equations (Chazy and Blasius). Each pixel in the image corresponds to a point in the complex plane and the real and imaginary parts of the function are indicated by intensities of two different colours. In particular, the structure of the singularities of the function becomes apparent.

linalg

This package provides basic linear algebra tools on dense matrices, with approximate coefficients. An interface on Lapack library is used for machine type coefficients.

multivariate

Different representations of multivariate polynomials are available in this package. The sparse representation as an ordered sequence of terms (or monomials) is parametrized by the monomial ordering. The dense representations as tensor products either in the monomial or in the Bernstein basis are also provided by this package.

realroot

Subdivision solvers for univariate polynomials using Bernstein or Monomial basis representation. It includes a very efficient univariate solver, which computes the continued fraction expansion of the real roots of a polynomial. Subdivision solvers for multivariate polynomials using Bernstein basis representation, sleeve approximation and preconditioner are also available in this package.

polytopix

In this package, tools for the manipulation of polytopes are available (representation by inequalities or by generators) and connection with multivariate polynomial supports. The polytope manipulations are based on the library Cdd. A plugin for Axel is also available.

shape

This package provides data structures to manipulate algebraic curves and surfaces which are given by equations or by a parametrization. It also contains tools to compute, in a certified way, the topology of these algebraic sets or to compute arrangements, (self-) intersection curves of parametrized surfaces, singularities … Here is an example of a 3D curve obtained from the intersection of the real part and imaginary part of associated with a planar curve in the complex plane nearby a singular point.

symbolix

This package is for the manipulation of symbolic expressions. It provides basic calculus: differentiation, substitution, … on these expressions.

4.Towards a new high level language

The long term aim of the Mathemagix language is to provide a new high level language, with the following characteristics:

Strong typedness

It is strongly typed, with support for overloading, implicit conversions, generic objects, compile-time type checking and, possibly, built-in support for expression types which interact with the type system.

High level control structures

High level control structures, like coroutines, generators, exceptions, continuations, etc.

Reusability of external libraries

Besides achieving runtime efficiency of Mathemagix itself, we aim to achieve runtime efficiency through the extensive reuse of existing dedicated libraries written in other languages. Mathemagix therefore implements transparent mechanisms for reusing external libraries and in particular C++ template libraries.

Currently, we provide a rather slow interpreter of only a part of the full language (the mmxlight) package. A compiler is under development (the mathemagix package).

5.Front-ends

A textual shell mode

Mathemagix provides the user with a usual ascii shell mode and a convenient advanced programmer interface, based on a dedicated emacs mode.

A graphical interface

It can be used within GNU TeXmacs as a primary graphical interface. This offers a unified and user friendly framework for editing structured documents with different types of content (text, graphics, mathematics, etc.), including interactive content such as Mathemagix sessions. The rendering engine uses high-quality typesetting algorithms so as to produce professionally looking documents, which can either be printed out or presented from a laptop. It is also used to write and to generate the top-level documentation of the packages in different format (html, tex), in combination with Doxygen for the C++ code documentation.

A geometric modeler

The program is connected to the algebraic-geometric modeler axel as a tool for visualisation and geometric computation. Currently some packages of Mathemagix are directly used to build the computational kernel of Axel (multivariate, realroot, shape). Other packages (eg. polytopix) are producing independent plugins, which extend the interface and the functionalities of the algebraic-geometric modeler. The connection between the interpreter Mmx-light and Axel is under development, in order to get a bidirectional interoperability of the two applications.