Hi John, On 22 Aug., 08:03, John H Palmieri <jhpalmier...@gmail.com> wrote: > * Type "notebook()" for the notebook interface.
+1 for mentioning the notebook, but I think 'type "notebook()" for the GUI' is shorter, and since the word "notebook" is an explicit command name, it is quite likely that the user understands what GUI refers to. It might be made context/user dependent, though. E.g., after using the notebook for the first time, the user is expected to know the command notebook(), and thus that information could be suppressed. But I am only "+1/10" to it... > * Type "help()" for help. (Or whatever the command is.) +1! Help is a very important thing and should always be mentioned. > * Type "quit" to quit. +1, and I like your vi example... > * Type "license()" for license information. (With or without a > statement explicitly mentioning GPL.) Well, if GPL encourages it, why not "Sage is published under GPL, see licence() for details" (or license(), if you use sage outside UK :) So far, compared with the current banner, it is about one line more, which is certainly acceptable. > * Build info -1 > * Very detailed build info -10 > * Type "???" to print system information (OS, type of processor, > amount of RAM, etc.) I am ??? to that suggestion. I think a clear command name like sysinfo () would be better. > Anything else we might include? Probably the help function, say, sage_help() should do the job. What about the following: 1. sage_help() in the notebook opens some nice page in the browser, so that you can follow links to get specific answers. 2. sage_help() on the command line lists the possible arguments (corresponding to the links on the help page), like """ Type sage_help(topic) for specific information, wher topic is one of the following strings. - "introspection": How to get information on any function or object - "support": How to post a request on the sage-support list - "sysinfo": Technical details how Sage was built - ... """ 3. sage_help(topic) does as indicated above (or directly yields the corresponding help page, in the notebook) 4. sage_help(foo), where "foo" is any object, prints (or shows in "less"): 'Note: Typing "%s??" will give you the following information more easily.\n\n%s'%(foo.__name__, foo.__doc__) And so on. Cheers, Simon --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
