On 9/18/07, Peter Doyle <> wrote: > > Hi William, > > > When you click download, what happens is that you save the file > > to your local disk, and only after that happens it happens to > > be opened by a pdf (or dvi or ps) reader on your computer. Three > > separate things happen. > > > > Actually, when I click download, nothing obvious happens (on my G4 > running Mac OS 10.4). I am interested to learn that the file is > supposed to open in some reader. I think is that had happened, I > might have developed a better notion of why this was called > `download'.
I was referring to downloading a paper from the arxiv, i.e., your other example. I was not referring to Sage notebooks. As for `upload', I admit I am still not clear on what this is supposed > to do. I don't know that I've ever successfully uploaded a file. > It generally says, "Error uploading worksheet 'Error decompressing > saved worksheet.'". Probably I am trying to upload the wrong kind of > file. That's using the upload button on the `Home' page. There's > also an `upload' selection on the `Data' menu, which winds up telling > me I can download the file (this was confusing - I thought we were > trying to upload the file!) or link it to a worksheet (whatever that > means) or delete it. What kind of file are you uploading? Currently the only file type that is supported is files that you downloaded before from the Sage notebook. Other formats will be added next time their is a notebook coding sprint. > It sounds from what you write though, that it is best to just stick > > with the "upload" / "download" terminology, since it is *very* clear > > in which direction the file goes in each case. Upload means "goes > > to the server (SAGE notebook), and download means it goes to > > your local hard drive. > > > > I guess what you mean is that it really ought to be clear. But think > about it from the user's point of view. I am not thinking of the > notebook as a server. To me, SAGE feels like any other application, > except that it happens to be running in a browser window. You see a > big distinction in the fact that it is running as a server, but you've > succeeded so well in making the notebook interface feel like an > ordinary application that this distinction doesn't seem obvious to me. > As for the analogy to google apps, there I understand that there are > these farms of machines out in Nebraska or Nevada or somewhere to > which I can `upload' my file. But here everything is running on my > machine, so this distinction isn't so obvious to me. Now I am > starting to understand it. Anyway, my point is that you should not > assume that what is very clear to you as the architect of the system > will be very clear to users, to whom the SAGE notebook interface may > look more like an application than a server. In Mathematica or Maple, > I open and close documents, so that's what I'm expecting to do with > SAGE. Understood. I didn't actually think about any of the above when naming the menus as they are now. I just copied exactly what they were named in Google Documents. By the way, http://sagenb.org allows one to use Sage remotely (not on your own computer). > A general > > rule of thumb with Sage development is that one should avoid > > modifying the preparser if at all possible, because all such > modifications > > distance Sage from the very widely used and known Python language, > > and this in itself actually can cause a lot of problems and confusion. > > So we're pretty conservative about making any changes at all to > > the preparser at this point. > > > > Well, that makes sense. You've cast your lot with Python. I do worry > what will happen as Python changes. For example, they're talking > about getting rid of the print statement. And maybe getting rid of > xrange. If I commit to SAGE, will my worksheets keep going out of > date as Python changes? The choice is either Python (or Java/Perl/Ruby) or designing my own language; every other serious math system has made the latter choice. Choosing to use a mainstream standard language (like Python) is one of the main things that characterizes Sage. It has, in many ways I never expected, turned out to be -- by far -- the right choice to make. Python 3000 (=Python 3.0) -- when/if it ever gets released -- is advertised as the one and only major change to Python that will break backwards compatibility. So far, since the early 1990s, Python has been incredibly backward compatible. After Python 3.0, I expect Python will remain very stable as well. By the way the print change will mean that one writes sage: print (2+2) 4 instead of sage: print 2 + 2 4 It's conceivable the Sage preparser could add back the old behavior (or that Python 3.0 would add it back as an option). Also, there will be good quality tools for automatically migrating code to Python 3.0. Anyway, I think it will be nearly 3 years until Python 3.0 even begins to be something that will be really relevant to Sage. That's a long time, considering that Sage didn't exist in any way 3 years ago. Basically, in summary, I have no worries whatever about Python as a stable choice of language for Sage. > > > How does one specify an integer range in Maple, Mathematica, Maxima? > > > > > > > > > > In Mathematica, Range[10] is 1..10, Range[0,10] is 0..10. > > > > Interesting. It is like in Python, but adjusted for Mathematica being > > 1-based. > > Look, I hate Mathematica more than the next guy, even though I've been > using it for many years now. But in this case they've got it right. > And maybe Python has it right for bit-bangers. But I believe that to > have the value of sum(i for i in range(1,10)) be 45 is a recipe for > trouble. That's why I think your suggestion of replacing it with > sum(i for i in [1..10]) is a stroke of genius. Now instead of having > to constantly remind students that range(1,10) doesn't mean what they > think. you can just train them to use [1..10] instead. There was a long thread on sage-devel about this: http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/674e88887d0da278 OK, so as a former UCSD professor, I have to ask who you think is the > best calculus teacher there. John Eggers. I sat in on his class two years ago, and learned a great deal about how to teach Calculus: http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~jeggers/ -- William Stein Associate Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
