Contributor - Symbolic computing into Scilab

Description

The idea of this project would be to extend symbolic features in Scilab.

One lead would be to continue Jean-François Magni who sadly past away recently. He started a Symbolic Toolbox for Scilab and asked this toolbox to be continued. This toolbox is based on Maxima

We identified a few elements:

The dependency on Perl must be removed to communicate with Maxima. Using native C socket could be a solution
Perl is also used to do some regular expression process on strings, this can be done natively with Scilab 5 now (which is using the Perl Syntax for Regular Expressions)
We need plenty of unitary tests on this
- => in the current trunk of Scilab, we have added many automatic tests (unitaries, non regressions, benchmarks...)for example, have a look to the module STRING_V2 (/modules/STRING_V2/tests/)
We defined a standard for a module: Scilab Module Architecture
An idea (we have to dig further to see if it is realistic or not), since we based Scilab 5's GUI on a docking system, would be to add a "symbolic" and "numerical" window...

Some people may find easier to restart from scratch a new Scilab <=> maxima connector.

Instead of Maxima, it would be possible to base the solution on Reduce An other solution would be to use GiNAC