On Feb 2, 2010, at 2:31 PM, Ivan Andrus wrote: > On Jan 31, 2010, at 10:29 PM, Andy Somogyi wrote: > >> Hello All >> >> Here is a link to a prototype sage desktop app for the Mac. >> >> http://numerator.sourceforge.net/SageApp.dmg >> >> This is a first prototype, it has little functionality currently, will >> probably crash, almost certainly has numerous memory leaks, and is FAR, FAR, >> FAR from complete, but it is a START. >> >> Note, I am very happy to maintain and update this for the long term. > > Excellent. I wasn't willing to write something from scratch and maintain it > (I'm not interested in writing a web browser), which is why I tried to build > something off of Platypus and Fluidium instead. But if you are willing to > create a custom application it will almost certainly turn out better in the > long run. > >> Eventually, I want to have something that behaves similarly to the >> Mathematica desktop, and I think this is certainly possible with a >> Javascript/HTML5 based UI hosted in a set of WebKit views, and wrapped in a >> nice Cocoa app. The backed end / server is 100% cross platform, the client >> fits in nicely with the native desktop. It would be fairly simple for >> Windows person to come up with a Windows type app like this, and same for >> Linux / GTK person. >> >> So, try it out, let me know what features you would like to see. > > > To me I think one of the most important things is to have an application that > comes with the "batteries included" i.e. you just download the application, > move it wherever you want and launch it. This is not so much because I > personally want it that way, but I think we need to have as low a barrier to > playing with Sage as possible (that's why so much work is put into making it > "just build" on all supported platforms). As a mac user I am wary of long > installation instructions if I just want to try something out. Several times > I have downloaded an application, but never used it simply because it had an > installer. Getting this to work is well understood however and it should be > a cinch to switch your application for the one distributed with sage now and > just create a binary distribution.
I could not agree more, if the install is complicated, people simply will not use the app. I would like app to be able to work with either a pre-existing install of sage (as it is now), and to package up cage into the .app directory, this is pretty simple, just need to a bit if initialization code to deal with the sage self configuration bits. > As for other features that I would like to see, well I could probably go on > and on: > > Tabs would be nice, as well as a location bar, so that I can surf to trac and > such. Tabs are nice to have multiple docs open, but not sure about going to outside locations. There is certainly no technical reason this can't be done, I just think it might seem a bit more app like if the app only dealt with the sage session windows, and script / functions and so forth. So, to go to trac, they would need to tab over to a browser window. But, no big deal either way. > Support for userscripts (a la greasekit) and custom css. No problem, just need to think of a nice API for custom homepage html to call back into. Its really trivial to make your code callable from an an embedded webkit html page. > Ability to reopen the console once I have closed it (and probably have it > closed by default--would need a splash screen though). Just a menu item, and I obviously need to work on the console to get scrolling / updates working correctly. > Shortcuts in the location bar so that "t problem" will search trac for > "problem" etc. Can do, just need inspect the loaded DOM and write some appropriate code. > Some method of telling you that there is an update to Sage and make updating > easy. Does not seem like a big deal, will look into it. > Opening sws and pdf files and "doing the right thing". I think it should work now if a page has swf/pdf content. I'm not sure if Safari does something above and beyond webkit to display pdf. > Editing cells and/or notebooks in an external editor. This is the next thing I'm working on. I boosted the text editor control from smultron (a great open source Cocoa text editor), so the app will be able to edit python / html code directly with full syntax and indentation. This will give the app editing capability on par with matlab, and obviously look WAY LESS UGLY than matlab. I'd like to have debugging also, but this might take a while. I need to get back to some other stuff for about a week, then I will upload the cleaned up source to my sourceforge site. Good ideas. > etc. etc. > > I'm not telling you this to discourage you, but just to get some ideas going. > I'm willing to help where I can. It shouldn't be hard to do better than > what we currently have (I'm allowed to say that since I'm the one who created > it). Perhaps we should put ideas up on the wiki. Certainly > http://wiki.sagemath.org/SageMacApplication needs to be updated but it is > apparently an "Immutable Page". > > -Ivan > > -- > 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 > URL: http://www.sagemath.org -- 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 URL: http://www.sagemath.org
