fetrow@bones.biostat.washington.edu (Dave Fetrow) (03/06/89)
I got a chance to talk for a few seconds with Peter Wolfram after a lecture. Mathematica is actually a two part program: Interface and Kernel...which communicate by a "MathTalk" protocol. It was designed this way so you can have the interface running on a relatively small machine (1M Mac, 640K PC) and the kernel running on something a bit more of a monster (Unix Workstation, Cray II, etc.). [Stupidly I didn't ask about the Amiga] The "interface" has two aspects. It can be run (sans graphics) from an ordinary ASCII terminal but they plan on supporting whatever cool features a machine can handle (graphics, menus, multitasking, etc.). "MathTalk" shouldn't much care what actual connection is used. Soooo, it looks like we may be getting the Amiga support for small Amigas even is we don't get the whole thing providing we also have access to a machine that is running the kernel. ===== Oh yeah, it blew my socks off. I'm giving serious consideration to getting a MAJOR bank loan for something that can run it now. BITNET: dfetrow@uwarita -- david d. fetrow -- UUCP: uw-beaver!hilbert!fetrow INTERNET: fetrow@bones.biostat.washington.edu (cond ((lovep you (quote LISP)) (honk)) (t nil))