Terms and Conditions:

Timothy Daly wrote:Axiom Book is provided to you at no charge and you have a right to redistribute it to others (according to license). In return we depend on people like you - those who are willing to volunteer their time, effort and donations to ensure that all of Axiom remains free and that timely enhancements continue to be available to everyone.

Book Excerpts:

Axiom is a general purpose Computer Algebra system. It is useful for doing mathematics by computer and for research and development of mathematical algorithms. It defines a strongly typed, mathematically correct type hierarchy. It has a programming language and a built-in compiler.

Axiom has been in development since 1973 and was sold as a commercial product. On October 1, 2001 Axiom was withdrawn from the market and ended life as a commercial product. On September 3, 2002 Axiom was released under the Modified BSD license, including this document. On August 27, 2003 Axiom was released as free and open source software available for download from the Free Software Foundation's website, Savannah.

This document is a complete "re-implementation" of the original Axiom book by Jenks and Sutor. Virtually every line has been reviewed and rewritten into the new Axiom pamphlet format. Changes were made to reflect the new Axiom system. Additional material was added and some previous examples were rewritten. This is intended to be a "living" document with material referenced or gathered automatically from other parts of the system documentation.

This book opens the world of Axiom, guiding the reader and user through Axiom's definitions, rules, applications and interfaces. A variety of fully developed areas of mathematics are presented as packages, and the user is well advised to take advantage of the sophisticated realization of familiar mathematics.

Intended Audience:

The Axiom book is easy to read and the Axiom system is easy to use. It possesses all the features required of a modern computer environment (for example, windowing, integration of operating system features, and interactive graphics). Axiom comes with a detailed hypertext interface (HyperDoc), an elaborate browser, and complete on-line documentation. The HyperDoc allows novices to solve their problems in a straightforward way, by providing menus for step-by-step interactive entry.