On 9/14/07, Hamptonio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Recently I started using Mathematica 6 in the computer labs of some > courses I teach, and I cannot help but be impressed. The new dynamic > commands such as Manipulate are very impressive, and are perfect for > teaching. Before seeing how powerful it is, I had hoped to switch > from using mathematica to sage in the fall of 2008. But now I am not > sure I can justisfy that switch or convince my colleagues it would > make sense. (As an aside: assume for the sake of argument that my > department gets mathematica for free, which is true in a certain > bureaucratic sense). > > For some sense of what mathematica can now do, check out: > http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/newin6/content/DynamicInteractivity/. > I actually think its more impressive in person. > > While I would like to help remedy the gap between sage and mathematica/ > matlab in this respect, I am not sure how it would be done. I am > learning a little about wxPython, but I don't think that would work > through the notebook at all, unless a program was created on the > server for download and byte-compilation by the client. Does anyone > have any ideas? If javascript is a possibility, can someone recommend > a good reference for learning to use it for such complicated > purposes? Or is java an option?
Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that javascript/AJAX is good at doing? When you move an html control the server is contacted for the updated output and it is displayed (by directly manipulating the DOM). I'm sure it won't be as snappy as a purely local GUI (e.g., Mathematica), but it will work from anywhere over a web browser, which counts for a lot these days. I've had some discussions with people about implementing things like this (mostly with Robert Miller), but nobody has actually done it for SAGE yet. Our complete rewrite of the notebook to use Twisted as the underlying server technology I think makes doing something like this easier. -- 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/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
