Travis has is writing a nice patch #13605 which implements global options 
for partitions. Among other things, these options determine how partitions 
are printed (as lists, using exponential notation, compactly, ...), whether 
diagrams follow the English or French conventions, whether the default 
ordering is the lexicographic or dominance etc.

I have been bugging him with suggestions and requests, of which the main 
ones are:

   - each option should be accessible as an individual method 
   - the naming of these methods should systematic to make it easier for 
   other classes, which may themselves have options, to easily access these 
   methods.

As a result of these discussions I'd like to suggest a general frameworkfor 
implementing global options for element classes which are controlled by 
their parents (being a parent myself I am of course advocating for parental 
control here!:).  

The reason for this post is to ask whether need a general options mechanism 
for element classes and, if so, is anyone in favour of the approach 
described below.

The main idea is that the parent inherits a generic method (see below) of 
the form:

def options(self, *option, **options):
    r"""
    Print and set options for the element class of ``self``
    """"
    ....

which is used to set and print the options for the element class. In the 
element_class the options to the method ``foo`` are methods of the form 
``foo_option1``, ``foo_option2`` and so on. What the ``options`` method of 
the parent does is simply set ``self.element.foo`` equal to the desired 
option. The nice thing about this, is that the options do not add extra 
overhead to the methods and they can be added to the element class simply 
by adding appropriate methods:

def _repr__fuzzy(self): return 'I am fuzzy'
def _repr__focussed(self: return 'I am focussed'
_repr_=_repr_focussed  # the default

and then you can set the option with

sage: parentClass.options(_repr_='fuzzy')

This will set  _repr_  = _repr__fuzzy  --- or raise a ValueError if this is 
not a valid option.

As a test case, I have implemented a prototype for partitions, however, the 
code is completely general. Just as importantly, it seems to work quite 
well. For those who want to see the details I will upload a patch 
trac_13605?--generic_partition_options-am.patch to the queue shortly. 

Here are some examples of how it works:
sage: mu=Partition([4,4,3,2,1,1,1]); mu     
[4, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1]
sage: Partitions(4).options('_repr_')      # the default behaviour is to 
print partitions as lists
list

Because of the underscores, using _repr_ as the option name seems slightly 
"wrong", so I allow an alias which in this case is 'display':

sage: Partitions(4).options('display')
list
sage: Partitions(4).options(display='exp'); mu
1^3, 2, 3, 4^2
sage: mu._repr__exp()                      # this is what _repr_ now calls
1^3, 2, 3, 4^2
sage: Partitions(4).options(display='exp_high'); mu
4^2, 3, 2, 1^3
sage: Partitions(4).options(display='compact'); mu
1^3,2,3,4^2
sage: Partitions(4).options(display='compact_high'); mu
4^2,3,2,1^3
sage: Partitions(4).options(display='diagram');
sage: Partitions(4).options(convention='french'); mu
*
*
*
**
***
****
****
****
****
sage: Partitions(4).options(convention='english'); mu
****
****
***
**
*
*
*
sage: Partitions(4).options(cmp='dominance')
sage: Partition([3,1,1,1])>Partition([2,2,2])
False
sage: Partitions(4).options(cmp='lex')       # lexicographic ordering
sage: Partition([3,1,1,1])>Partition([2,2,2])
True
sage: Partitions(4).options(display='exp'); mu
1^3, 2, 3, 4^2
sage: Partitions(4).options(display='exp_high'); mu
4^2, 3, 2, 1^3
sage: Partitions(4).options(display='list'); mu
[4, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1]
sage: Partitions(4).options(display='exp_low')
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValueError: exp_low is not a valid option for display


Above 'cmp' is an alias which controls the options of the four methods 
'__lt__', '__le__', '__ge__' and '__gt__'. So aliases allow options to be 
given sensible names and, in addition, they allow one option to change more 
than one method.

With this scheme I am able to do everything which Travis does except 
(possibly?) for passing arguments to methods. (Travis allows you to 
globally set the character printed in a Ferrers diagram.) In the examples 
above I use Partitions(4) only because I added the options method to 
Partitions_n, rather than to Partitions_all, and these two classes are 
completely independent of each other because partitions are not fully 
integrated into the parent/element framework.

Please let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Andrew


----

To save you looking at the patch here is the options method

# the keys of option_alias are aliases to options, or groups of options.
option_alias = {'cmp':['__le__','__lt__','__ge__','__gt__'],
                'convention':['ferrers_diagram','_latex__diagram'],
                'display':['_repr_'],
                'latex':['_latex_']
                }

def options(self, *option, **options):
    r"""
    Print and set options for the element class of ``self``.

    Global options for the method ``foo`` of the element_class are methods
    with names of the form ``foo_<option name>``. For example, for
    :class:`Partition_class` the following optional methods for ``_repr_``
    are currently implemented::

    -_repr__list(self):
    -_repr__exp(self):
    -_repr__exp_high(self):
    -_repr__compact(self):
    -_repr__compact_high(self):
    -_repr__diagram(self):

    The global options can changed, and the current options printed, using 
``self.options``:

    EXAMPLES::

        sage: mu=Partition([4,4,3,2,1,1,1]); mu
        [4, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1]
        sage: Partitions(4).options('_repr_')
        list
        sage: Partitions(4).options(_repr_='exp'); mu
        1^3, 2, 3, 4^2
        sage: Partitions(4).options(_repr_='exp_high'); mu
        4^2, 3, 2, 1^3
        sage: Partitions(4).options(_repr_='compact'); mu
        1^3,2,3,4^2
        sage: Partitions(4).options(_repr_='compact_high'); mu
        4^2,3,2,1^3
        sage: Partitions(4).options(_repr_='diagram');
        sage: Partitions(4).options(convention='french'); mu
        *
        *
        *
        **
        ***
        ****
        ****
        ****
        ****
        sage: Partitions(4).options(convention='endlish'); mu
        ****
        ****
        ***
        **
        *
        *
        *
        sage: Partitions(4).options(cmp='dominance')
        sage: Partition([3,1,1,1])>Partition([2,2,2])
        False
        sage: Partitions(4).options(cmp='lex')
        sage: Partition([3,1,1,1])>Partition([2,2,2])
        True
        sage: Partitions(4).options(display='exp_low')
        Traceback (most recent call last):
        ...
        ValueError: exp_low is not a valid option for display
        

    The dictionary ``self.option_alias`` defines aliases for options
    so that the different options can be given more user friendly names. 
For example,
    ``display`` is an option for ``_repr__``::

    EXAMPLES::

        sage: Partitions(4).options(display='exp'); mu
        1^3, 2, 3, 4^2
        sage: Partitions(4).options(display='exp_high'); mu
        4^2, 3, 2, 1^3
        sage: Partitions(4).options(display='list'); mu
        [4, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1]

    The values of ``self.option_alias`` are lists of strings so that one
    option can change several different methods. For example, the ``cmp``
    option redefines the behaviour of the four comparison methods 
    ``__le__``, ``__lt__``, ``__ge__`` and ``__gt__``. Note that we need
    need to append '__' to all method names which begin with '__' otherwise
    they are treated as inaccessible private methods.
    """
    # todo: when called with no arguments a list of all options should be 
printed,
    #           ...probably needs to be done via something like 
``self.options_doc``
    # --
    # print the current settings for the options in ``option``
    for opt in option:  
        try:
            opt_name=self.option_alias.get(opt,[opt])[0]
            current_opt=getattr(self.element_class,opt_name).__name__
            current_opt=current_opt[len(opt_name)+1:]
            if opt_name[:2]=='__':      # some trickery to avoid private 
classes
                current_opt=current_opt[:-2]  # remove trailing '__'
            print current_opt[len(opt_name):]
        except AttributeError:
            raise ValueError, '%s is not a valid option' % opt
    # change the option settings for the options in ``options``  
    for opt in options:
        for opt_name in self.option_alias.get(opt,[opt]):
            if opt_name[:2]=='__':   # some trickery to avoid private 
classes
                new_opt=opt_name+'_'+options[opt]+'__'
            else:
                new_opt=opt_name+'_'+options[opt]
            if hasattr(self.element_class,new_opt):
                new_opt=getattr(self.element_class,new_opt)
                setattr(self.element_class, opt_name, new_opt)
            else:
                raise ValueError, '%s is not a valid option for %s' % 
(options[opt], opt)

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