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Re: New position: MathLink Developer

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg16884] Re: New position: MathLink Developer
  • From: Jens-Peer Kuska <v-jkuska>
  • Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1999 02:24:23 -0400
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Hi Tobias,

it is not a good idea to use *any* software without reading
the manuals. You have probably never read more than the first 21 pages 
of "The Mathematica Book".

Page 630--674 and 1256--1266 (Reference) of the Mathematica
Book, Third Edition by Stephen Wolfram list almost all what you need to write
a MathLink program. There are additional documents on MathSource and many
many programs. At least you can learn from my source codes at

http://www.mpae.gwdg.de/~kuska

how to use MathLink. Even for non-standard cases like loopback links,
callbacks to the Kernel,  own event handling and parallel computing. 

Several "own" FrontEnds, like Leibniz

http://www.athenet.net/~jgregg/Leibniz.html

have been written and so it seems to be possible, I had my own for
version 2.x
(on MathSource) and I will return to a 3. version of it soon.

As far as I remember the most questions about MathLink are answered in the
news group.
But to give a defined answer on has to know

- the operating system
- the compiler
- the Mathematica version

only a few people using more than one operating system. The relative high
costs of a commercial compiler make it nearly impossible to use more
than one or two. So the probability that you find a person that can help you
with MathLink on operating system X with compiler Y and Mathematica 2.2+Z
is rather small. As long as one has not exactly the same configuration
nobody can give you a defined answer. 

In the most cases a *defined* answer to a MathLink question can be only given
when I see
 a) the source code
 b) can try a debugging session

You can't not realy expect that anyone start with debugging your C-programs!
Not at Wolfram Research and not in the Mathematica news-group.
You should take a look to other programing news-groups. The answers to
questions like "I have a bug, I don't know why, here is a pice of C-code ..."
are always vague. Every one that gives a "defined" answer to this kind 
of question has never used a compiler.

Regards
  Jens

tobiasoed at my-dejanews.com wrote:
> 
> [ Clipped from: comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica ]
> 
> In article <7dps5p$dr7 at smc.vnet.net>,
>   Barb Taub <barb at wolfram.com> wrote:
> >
> > MATHLINK DEVELOPER:
> > MathLink is the communication interface and a key component of
> > Mathematica.
> 
> With just one flaw: the documentation, which makes it nearly unusable.
> 
> > MathLink allows Mathematica to communicate with other
> > software over various transport protocols such as the Internet. For
> > instance the Mathematica frontend
> 
> programmed by Wolfram people who are the only ones to know what to
> expect from mathlink
> 
> > uses MathLink to communicate with the
> > kernel.   We are looking for strong developers to help us expand this
> > key technology as we continue to grow our product and our technology.
> 
> give some doc and we will make it grow too.
> 
> > You will be part of a world-class team developing MathLink applications
> > and core MathLink technologies. This position requires strong
> > cross-platform C/C++ experience.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Have you ever noticed how most of the posts to this newsgroup concerning
> MathLink remain without an answer (or very vague ones) ? Nobody seems to know
> how exactly this is to be used when you want to write a new frontend. except
> for wolfram people, but they apparently don't want to share. Tobias
> 
> for wolfram people seems
> 
> -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> http://www.dejanews.com/       Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own


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