[Maxima] Looking for basic outline of how Maxima is put together

[Richard Fateman]

Robert Dodier wrote:
> On 7/28/10, Steve Stevenson <steve at cs.clemson.edu> wrote:
>
>   
>> I'm new to Maxima but not CASs in general. I'm looking for an overview
>> document of the control loop. I'm interested in interfacing Maxima through
>> another route so I'd like to pass sexprs back and forth.
>>     

displa   is the display program
meval is the maxima evaluation program.
mread  reads and parses a command.

(loop (displa (meval (mread))))

is essentially the control loop.
It gets much more complicated if you want to handle interrupts and such.

If you write in lisp, you can call mread, meval, displa etc.

If you write in some other language, you end up writing and 
reading/parsing strings.
This is a distraction from getting anything done.  However, there are 
people who
do not care, and would rather not use lisp.

RJF