On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 9:42 AM, Maurizio <maurizio.gran...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi > >> >> Very interesting. >> >> 1. How does the speed of the Sage notebook running locally on your >> computer compare to Spyder locally on your computer? >> > > I don't think they can be comparable, doing so different functions... > Anyway I always use notebook from a server in the local network (which > is anyway pretty fast). And I still fear that my python installation > in the windows virtual machine is somehow broken because the ipython > console is much slower than the plain python console. By the way, some > time ago we managed to run spyder letting it use the sage console as > interpreter, which was kind of fun, but never used it extensively. > Basically what we did was to install spyder on the server hosting > SAGE, and then running Spyder logging on that machine from our > workstation and exporting the display. That has been a very > interesting experiments, but later I had little occasion to use it, > and the notebook is still more comfortable for touch and go. > >> 2. Are the plotting issues you mention the result of Spyder embedding >> static png images (like the sage notebook does) or something more >> subtle. The sage notebook might switch to HTML5 canvas rendering >> soon.... I say might, because after having tried it a bunch, I'm >> seriously concerned that HTML5 canvas matplotlib is slow -- >> surprisingly, maybe much slower than using png's and image maps, which >> we should have at least enabled long ago. >> > > Yes, they embed static png images with image maps (if I understand > what you refer to), which is standard matplotlib output nicely put > inside a Spyder subwindow. The problem is that I strongly dislike this > output form, I consider it like a fake form of interaction. Some time > ago, we were considering to spend a little amount of time in writing a > HTML5 canvas for matplotlib, but we stopped because of (apart not > knowing how to interface with a server) doubts about matplotlib > structure.
As of matplotlib-1.0, there is now an HTML5 canvas for matplotlib. I played around with it a bunch on Sunday. It'll be in Sage soon enough. > What I mean is that matplotlib is designed so that its > canvas is just translating a bunch of lines and points and other > graphical objects into something that is understood by the target > viewer. To enhance real interaction, IMHO, the best way would be to > pass to the viewer also an idea of the hierarchical structure of the > plot, so that the viewer by itself is capable of changing basic > properties like "axis visibiliy", "plot line colour", etc. At this > point, I hope we were wrong and that HTML5 canvas that has been > developed can overcome these problems. Anyway, I think that doing > everything on the server side and letting the client only plot the > received data may be too much communication overhead, while there are > a number of different javascript viewers which are pretty powerful and > fast. > >> 3. I have talked with people about making a Matlab-clone-ish version >> of the Sage notebook. This would be web-based, but instead of feeling >> Mathematica-like, it would feel much more Matlab-like. Thoughts? >> >> > > I think that SAGE-python can be easily accepted by Matlab users > because of intrinsic similarity of scripting language structure, > console interaction, and stuff like that. The problem is that Matlab > is very reliable for operations like vector manipulation (which > require additional interaction with numpy in SAGE), data analysis > (there are many potential toolboxes in scipy) and symbolic analysis > (for which SAGE is growing, but still very far from industrial-level > reliability). > On the filter design side, I agree that is very useful and often used, > and I can tell that scipy has the signal toolbox which incorporates > some functions to do this. I think that most of the engineering > appealing that SAGE can show is currently strongly supported by numpy/ > scipy power: if SAGE can be better integrated with them, and if we can > improve their functions, things will improve for engineers. > > At the moment, there may be very little advantage of using SAGE > instead of plain python to interface with numpy/scipy, which are > anyway the core toolboxes needed. Yes, that's what engineers think. -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.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
