Hi all, summarizing ideas and arguments from this thread gives the following proposal:
Sage would benefit from the possibility to work in two different modes, a "classroom mode", and a "pedantic mode". In the classroom mode, e.g. symbolic expressions would be callable, and quite some guessing would happen behind the scene. Since Wolfram Research is likely to have spent (compared to the other players) most resources in usability issues, the Sage classroom mode could be modeled quite closely after what they do. And we will get the same strange erronuous behaviour in certain cases as they do, and as was mentioned above (mma mailing lists). Calling non-commutative rings modules in Sage might just barf and refuse to work in classroom-mode. In the pedantic mode, e.g. variables just have to be defined. All the plot functions might have a considerably more complicated syntax. The user would have more freedom to exactly tell what he wants Sage to do for him. But the user also would have now the greater responsibility inevitably linked to being granted more power. As for the details, for the user interface it essentially boils down to have verbose error messages. E.g. a plot function called in "pedantic mode", but with "classroom mode" style parameters not just saying "No", but telling the user "In classroom mode, this would work. You are in pedantic mode, so you probably want to do <Code Snippet> to get the same behaviour". Technically, alas, this proposal would imply a good deal of work, and a whole new dimension of complexity. We would need many, many tests being doubled (one for each of the two modes), to mention only one of several areas. The Sage project does not seem to have the necessary developer resources, at least for the near future. What do you think? Cheers, gsw --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
