On Aug 22, 2009, at 9:57 AM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote: > > William Stein wrote: > >> It's important to clarify what a banner is for, what is "useful >> information" and for what purpose. First, think about this -- Every >> time you read a question or bug report from a user, what do you often >> ask the user? >> >> If it is a build question: >> >> * what OS exactly? what hardware exactly? what compiler? did >> you >> customize (=screw anything up) on your OS? >> >> If it is a usage question: >> >> * which version of Sage? exactly what hardware do you have? how >> much RAM? what OS? precisely what binary did you install or did >> you >> build from source? > > That's my point. In many cases people don't know themselves. I've > built > Sage with various compiler versions, various compilers and its easy to > lose track of what is what.
Usually when we ask for this kind of information, it's due to a segfault (illegal instruction), or failed build. I think we should provide it at those points. A single line of info in the banner could be useful, but we'll want more than a pageful of information to really dive into the problem which is too much to stick there. > >> flat:rh wstein$ sage >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> - >> | Sage Version 4.1.1, Release Date: >> 2009-08-14 | >> | Type notebook() for the GUI, and license() for >> information. | >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> - >> >> Regarding the current banner (see above), the information conveyed >> is: >> >> (1) the version of Sage -- by far the most important thing -- >> critical. > > Agreed. > >> (2) the date it was released -- I could care less and never >> look at this > > I guess it could be of use if someone uses a machine and finds Sage > is 3 > years old, they might consider looking around for a newer version. I > doubt any developer would care, but it could be useful to an end user. +1 >> (3) How to start the notebook interface -- obviously I don't care, >> but new users find this very important, I would guess? > > I think it is useful to have. The only other essentials I would say are how to get more help (a single command, and I'm up for hijacking Python's help(), it's probably more confusing from Sage than useful), and how to quit. Aesthetically, I like the shorter banner, but maybe that's just me. - Robert --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
