I have a quick question that is related to engineering support (I was
reading the document you posted on the wiki about sd24, and I see the
roadmap is planning to address those issues for SAGE 7.0.. ouch!): I
don't know exactly how this is achieved, but I can see that
sage: type(1)
<type 'sage.rings.integer.Integer'>
this should come from the fact that the preparser replaces usual
numbers with sage numerical types.
Nonetheless, still we have:
sage: type([1,2,3])
<type 'list'>
This means that list are not replaced by anything internal, even if
they are collector of python objects which are still sage numbers. I
wonder which is the policy of SAGE towards arrays and matrices. I
think there is a good base in numpy and scipy, so I wonder if it would
make sense to let the preparser transform any list of numbers into a
numpy array. That would greatly improve user ergonomy in case of raw
numbers manipulation.
That could be a not-default option, that could be activated using a
function like:
def numpy_mode(str):
if str == 'on':
from numpy import *
"turn any list into a numpy array"
elif str == 'off':
"reverse behaviour"
[I'm just talking on top of my head]
Another slightly related issue is: could we make
plot(numpy.array([1,2,3,4])) behave like
list_plot(numpy_array([1,2,3,4]))? The way it is now, it just doesn't
work...
The reason I'm doing this is that I assume a big income of users when
the windows port is ready (soon) and maybe there are a lot of non-
mathematicians among them.
Could it be that it make sense to create a wiki page with all the
desiderata about SAGE/engineering? Maybe that may help in the long
run, like the one I created for the physical units package! I can see
that other scientists are in this community, I'm wondering if they may
help, being even more experienced in contributing to SAGE.
Cheers
Maurizio
On Jul 14, 1:57 am, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 1:42 AM, Maurizio <maurizio.gran...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I just spend a couple of words about IDEs. I've personally spent a
> > decent amount of time on Spyder and Eric, and my impressions are:
> > - Eric is very well suited for general software development, it is not
> > completely polished, and it lacks (at least explicitly, I didn't get
> > those) useful features for scientific computing (which I'll later
> > mention)
> > - Spyder is theoretically exactly what I was looking for: it is a
> > pythonized version of the Matlab GUI, which I felt very comfortable to
> > use; nonetheless, the problems are there:
> > 1) I find it very slow (even if I may have problems with matplotblib,
> > my workstation is quad-core and generally fast), certainly slower than
> > Eric (I think both are written in Python)
> > 2) window management is awful: if you undock an internal subwindow,
> > you are forced to not move it again within the area of the main Spyder
> > window, otherwise it immediately redocks it
> > 3) integrated plot management looks pretty, but (it's entirely not
> > Spyder's fault) matplotlib just outputs pictures, so plot navigation
> > is still orders of magnitude less evolved than Matlab's (I know it may
> > sound silly, but is that so difficult to do something better??)
> > on the pros side I count:
> > 1) both internal and external console: the former one is useful to do
> > experiments within the script you are editing, the latter is better to
> > have a clean environment
> > 2) variables management and browsing
> > 3) enhanced editing (code completion, syntax highlighting, classes
> > identification and browsing)
>
> Very interesting.
>
> 1. How does the speed of the Sage notebook running locally on your
> computer compare to Spyder locally on your computer?
>
> 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.
>
> 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 don't know what about outside Europe, but I find so strange that
> > SAGE is unknown in scientific community, I find it very useful (from
> > an engineering point of view), and I personally think that may be a
> > perfect solution to be introduced inside universities at first (thanks
> > to the wonderful internet-based notebook system).
>
> I was also very surprised. But it is simply a fact I observed. Well, it
> wasn't
> so much that Sage is *unknown* -- many people knew about it. What I
> noticed at Euroscipy is that very few of the people there used Sage.
> Not a single speaker
> (except me) said they used Sage, and there were nearly about speakers
> (including
> lightning talks).
>
> > The problem I see now regarding scientific computing, is the not so
> > seamless integration of numpy-scipy: do you think SAGE may improve
> > numpy arrays management with cleaner syntax than regular python? I
> > know you are usually against introducing syntax that is unacceptable
> > in standard python, but I think that allowing users to avoid writing
> > "np.array()" to do any kind of vector manipulation would be highly
> > appreciated!
>
> Yes, this is definitely a Sage goal. I talked a lot about this goal
> with Dag last weekend (he's one of the lead Cython developers).
>
> > I strongly support SAGE for science!! :)
>
> Thanks.
>
> > By the way (not completely off-topic) a colleague of mine is having
> > some troubles in working with scipy.optimize within SAGE, but I have
> > no details right now... I should better check!
>
> Yep, report it.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > My 2 cents
>
> > Thanks
>
> > Maurizio
>
> > On 11 Lug, 20:41, Ondrej Certik <ond...@certik.cz> wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 3:20 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Hi,
>
> >> > 1. IDE's
> >> > There are a number of IDEs that can be used for Python development:
>
> >> > * Spyder (free, cross platform) --http://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/
> >> > * Eric (free, cross platform) --http://eric-ide.python-projects.org/
> >> > * PyDev + Eclipse or Aptana (free, cross platform) --http://pydev.org/
> >> > * Wing IDE (non free, but has a 30-day trial)
> >> > --http://www.wingware.com/
> >> > * XCode (free, closed, OS X only)
>
> >> > I'm at EuroScipy and many of the scientists and engineers giving talks
> >> > mention some of these IDE's (especially Spyder). It would be of
> >> > interest to make a page athttp://wiki.sagemath.orgabouteach of the
> >> > above IDE's in the context of Sage. Which can be used with Sage?
> >> > How? Do they work on anything but Linux, etc. Any volunteers? This
> >> > could be a good student project (so possibly some funding for
> >> > something at UW).
>
> >> > 2. Sage at EuroScipy:
>
> >> > Another thing -- though most talks mention Cython, not one single talk
> >> > given about actual engineers/scientists doing work even mentioned Sage
> >> > -- and there were over 30 talks. Perhaps there is no penetration at
> >> > all of Sage into scientific computing, at least in Europe. Perhaps
> >> > this will change in the next few years, given that NSF looks highly
> >> > likely to fund this NSF granthttp://wstein.org/grants/compmath09/
>
> >> > Sage was only mentioned in the first keynote by Langtangen, in which
> >> > he explained that installing Python for his students is very hard.
> >> > His personal solution -- force the students to install Ubuntu, either
> >> > natively or in a Virtual Machine. Full stop.
> >> >http://picasaweb.google.com/wstein/20100710EuroscipyDay1#549240022431...
> >> > He made some (funny) jokes about being a dictator.
>
> >> > I personally disagree with his suggested "solution". Maple, Matlab,
> >> > Mathematica do better, and so can we.
>
> >> Yeah, definitely. I am now working at the Lawrence Livermore National
> >> Lab during the summer and I don't have a root access to my computer,
> >> and it is not running Ubuntu. So his solution would be a complete
> >> failure for me.
>
> >> I am running our latest git femhub:http://femhub.org/andthat
> >> creates me a nice environment, and I use "femhub --shell", which is
> >> like "sage -sh", except that the prompt looks better:
>
> >> FEMhub: ond...@raven:~/repos/hermes1d(master)$
>
> >> Here are the packages that are in femhub:
>
> >>http://femhub.org/codes.php
>
> >> At least for me, it's now doing exactly what I need.
>
> >> Another problem is with gui ---- I couldn't get any working for
> >> matplotlib. So I would like to get the html5 canvas working for
> >> matplotlib.
>
> >> Also I would like to have some easy way to create guis, it should run
> >> in the browser. Using extjs:http://www.sencha.com/products/js/, but
> >> I'd like to somehow write it in Python, so that I don't have to mess
> >> up with javascript.
>
> >> Ondrej
>
> > --
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>
> --
> William Stein
> Professor of Mathematics
> University of Washingtonhttp://wstein.org
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