General Purpose Systems

PARAMAX or PARAMACS

MACSYMA (Project MAC's SYmbolic MAnipulation System) is a large computer algebra system for symbolic and numerical computations. Originally MACSYMA was developed by the MATH lab group at M.I.T. The descendants of MACSYMA (circa 1982) fall into two camps, viz., the commercialized Symbolics MACSYMA and its successor from Macsyma, Inc., and the versions released to National Energy Software Center at Argonne, Illinois, which are based on the "public" MIT source code for the DEC PDP-10 MACLisp system. The latter ones do not have the Symbolics enhancements, but they have been modified from time to time by several individuals or groups.

One of these modifications is known as PARAMAX and as PARAMACS. It is a Common-Lisp based implementation, which has been ported from the original MACLisp source. PARAMAX is available for VAX/VMS under DEC VAXLisp 2.2, and on SUN-3 and SUN-4 under Franz, Inc. Allegro Common Lisp. Versions for SGI are also available, and MAC/PC versions are being worked on. Maintenance, phone services, and site licensing are available. Contact:

Leo Harten
Paradigm Associates, Inc.
29 Putnam Avenue, Suite 6
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: 617-492-6079
Email: lph@paradigm.com

Features/Enhancements of PARAMAX include

• Has a garbage collector under DEC Common Lisp and can now run under VMS BATCH mode using command files (both unlike the older NIL Lisp version.)
• Full Macsyma Consortium (MIT-MC) environment with SHARE library files compiled, including source, demo, usage, and verification files.
• Numerous bug fixes throughout the kernel of Macsyma.
• Completely updated on-line documentation. Changed pages to Part I of the Reference Manual.
• Enhanced PRIMER, BATCH, DEMO, EXAMPLE, DESCRIBE.
• PLOT2 graphics supporting TEK4014, POSTSCRIPT, and VAXSTATION (UIS), and UNIX (plot(5)) formats; animation of bitmaps; and bug fixes and speed enhancements.
• Ability to create a SUSPENDED environment or a static-linked EXE file under your own copy of VAX-Lisp 2.2 . You only need one copy of VAX-Lisp to create a portable EXE file, and the EXE file can be constructed so that you do not need any additional licensing to use the EXE file site-wide. Contact Paradigm Associates, Inc. for information if you don't have a VAX-Lisp 2.2 somewhere on site. The minimum "run-time only" distribution with a 15,000 block shareable EXE file requires 32,000 blocks
• Passes the extensive Paradigm test-suite, which compares results of DEMO, EXAMPLE, LPH, SHAREM, SHARE, SHARE1, SHARE2, ODE, and TENSOR example and demo files with checked-output files.
• GNU EMACS 18.51 for VAX/VMS is included, with sources, and can be called from inside DOE-Macsyma to edit files which can then be BATCH'ed in Macsyma.
• Prof. Fateman's Macsyma-->TEX converter allows TEX formatting.
• Maintenance, phone services, and site licensing are available

General Purpose Systems

Last updated: February 21, 1995