On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 02:54:31PM -0700, William Stein wrote: > On 7/10/07, David Harvey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I don't really like the idea of "modules that imitate various > > environments", i.e. I don't think it's possible or desirable for us to > > try to look specifically like any other system. Mathematica semantics > > are so different from SAGE's, it would be misleading to suggest > > anything like that. > > I agree completely with this. We should learn a lot about how > Mathematica/Maple, etc., work, and why, but then make a _choice_ > for SAGE that is a reasonable trade-off between various options. > Python is flexible enough that individual users can always create > such customizations for themselves. For example, people who like > "N" being "make it numeric" might just put this in their .sage/init.sage > file:
I think the init file idea needs to be pushed harder. I already do this and the flexibility is absolutely critical to my happiness. I even have my init file call another file in the current directory so I can have different things defined depending on which project I'm working on (Of course, that idea doesn't have much merit from the notebook). We could publish init files for various CAS's. I realize we can't match semantics, but for myself I don't think the semantics are the hard part -- the hard part is remembering the new function name. We could also publish init files for various branches of mathematics -- applied, number theory, etc. I realize this could lead to support questions when people do dumb things in their init file, but I think it is easily worth to publish this huge amount of flexibility. -- Joel --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
