On 8/20/07, Robert Bradshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Wrong. The notebook is fully functional in pure python, as is DSAGE,
> > and as is all of the interfaces to Gap, maxima, etc.
>
> I guess I should have said "doing much *math*" because I agree that
> there is tons of non-math functionality that could be very useful to
> people.
Maybe instead of sagelite it could be called "sage-nonmath". I'm not
sure what a good name is though, so I'm using sagelite for now. The
point though, is that it's a way to get a lot of people to use the non-math
functionality. The secret goal is that it's a way to get lots of
quality developers
to improve the notebook (and interfaces too maybe), who would never ever
touch them otherwise.
> >> Even the calculus package
> >> has pyx files, and I would envision it getting more.
> >
> > Those are *only* to support some syntac suger, e.g., var('...') doing
> > namespace injection. That unecessary for the calculus package.
>
> OK, that's not much. (I was going off memories of calculus flashing
> by during sage -ba) I thought the plan was to eventually implement
> some of the stuff in calculus (e.g. for fast construction/evaluation/
> subs) but perhaps it is so dominated by maximal calls that it
> wouldn't help much.
Yep. Maxima calls dominate. If SAGE had money, a possible project
would be to eliminate a lot of the depence on maxima. With the current
state of SAGE funding that isn't a good way to spend time.
> We'll have to see how simpy fits into this too
> (though I'm glad to hear it's going well).
>
> >> The "lite" makes
> >> it seem like the core is still there, and I don't see how to extract
> >> that.
> >
> > It depends on what you view as the core. Maybe lite is the wrong
> > name.
> > For tons of people out there the notebook and interfaces are the only
> > parts of SAGE they currently use. Think, e.g., of Fernando Perez
> > -- he'd
> > be likely to use something simple-to-install with the interfaces to
> > Mathematica,
> > etc., in it. He has no need of our algebraic functionality, since
> > he uses
> > scipy for his number crunching needs.
>
> I guess I've always seen the core as a mathematical computation
> engine (that includes many other open-source math packages in a
> hassle-free way). I think this is a common view (others--correct me
> if I'm wrong). SAGE is a lot more than its core, but to me sage-lite !
> = "everything but the serious mathematics."
>
> Now I understand your goal, I think it's a worthwhile one, but the
> name caught me completely off guard.
Basically the idea is to make the parts of SAGE that are not number crunching
math available to a *lot* more people, e.g., the "millions" that use Python....
> >> I think if it does anything mathematical on its own, it will be a
> >> very hard to draw (and understand) line (not to mention maintenance
> >> headache).
> >
> > I disagree, especially because of the existence of Sympy. A
> > couple months ago Sympy was not serious functionality wise,
> > like nzmath, but Sympy is rapidly progressing (partly because Google
> > gave them a lot of summer of code projects). Sympy is nothing
> > like nzmath, and in fact I think sympy is going to improve greatly.
>
> I'm still not sure that "some math" is better than "no math." The
> line should certainly not be "whatever is in pure python as of now."
> One problem I see is people trying to use matrices, or even factoring
> a number, which can be done via maxima behind the scenes but will be
> a very poor representative of what SAGE can really do. Or, at least,
> there should be a way to say "this is horribly inefficient compared
> to the version in full SAGE."
>
> If there is a very clear line, e.g. only calculus+plotting, maybe
> that would be OK.
>
> > Also, I know the calculus stuff in SAGE very well,
> > and it's dependence on the rest of SAGE is fairly
> > minimal, so it would be easy to modify so it doesn't
> > depend on the serious math library part of SAGE.
> > It would work on any system with maxima installed.
>
> Would that be "...the right version of maxima installed?" ;-)
Of course :-)
William
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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/
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
