[sage-devel] Re: Shall / can we reduce the number of Sage related Google groups?
On 8/3/11 11:07 AM, Johannes wrote: I don't see a common ground for sage-develop and sage-maketing. Looks like list should get mixed just to reduce the number of lists. I just posted a sage-marketing-material post on sage-devel about a flier I tweaked for mathfest. You can see that there is some really good feedback about it. I doubt those people would have seen it if I had just posted to sage-marketing. Maybe the posters can answer for themselves. Just thought I'd throw in that data point. Jason -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Mma CDF doc format
On Aug 3, 10:48 pm, Jason Grout wrote: > On 8/3/11 8:27 PM, kcrisman wrote: > > > Forwarding this as I've gotten a couple things about it - I assume > > this is not created by any separate standards organization but could > > be worth knowing about/having conversion from... I can't afford Mma so > > I don't know if these are just Mma notebooks with window-dressing or > > something more interesting. > > This "free" and "public" format license has been picked apart by the > IANAL slashdot people: > > http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/07/21/1632244/Wolfram-Launches-Comp... > > These two comments in particular seem relevant: > > http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2341450&threshold=1&comments... > > In particular, look at what freedoms you give up by using > CDF:http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/adopting-cdf/licensing-options.html > > * Distributed commercially or in any way monetizing the content > > * Removal of Wolfram branding elements > > * Enhanced capabilities, including import/export of external data, > arbitrary input fields, dialog windows, and file saving > > * Commercially marketed CDF ebook or app with rights-protected content > > > * Commercially marketed CDF content in support of any free or > commercial publication > Wow. See also the comment http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2341450&cid=36836310 -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Mma CDF doc format
On 8/3/11 8:27 PM, kcrisman wrote: Forwarding this as I've gotten a couple things about it - I assume this is not created by any separate standards organization but could be worth knowing about/having conversion from... I can't afford Mma so I don't know if these are just Mma notebooks with window-dressing or something more interesting. This "free" and "public" format license has been picked apart by the IANAL slashdot people: http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/07/21/1632244/Wolfram-Launches-Computational-Document-Format These two comments in particular seem relevant: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2341450&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=36836164 In particular, look at what freedoms you give up by using CDF: http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/adopting-cdf/licensing-options.html * Distributed commercially or in any way monetizing the content * Removal of Wolfram branding elements * Enhanced capabilities, including import/export of external data, arbitrary input fields, dialog windows, and file saving * Commercially marketed CDF ebook or app with rights-protected content * Commercially marketed CDF content in support of any free or commercial publication As far as licensing goes, I think I prefer HTML and embedded Sage interacts or just plain Sage notebook worksheets. :) Jason -- 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
[sage-devel] Mma CDF doc format
Forwarding this as I've gotten a couple things about it - I assume this is not created by any separate standards organization but could be worth knowing about/having conversion from... I can't afford Mma so I don't know if these are just Mma notebooks with window-dressing or something more interesting. - kcrisman ++ Today's online documents are like yesterday's paper--flat, lifeless, and inactive. Enter the Computable Document Format (CDF), a new public standard merging the simplicity of documents and interactivity of apps into a single, computation-powered knowledge container that empowers readers to drive content and generate results live. With Mathematica 8, you can easily create new interactive courseware, presentations, or papers or convert your existing classroom material by simply saving files as CDFs. The free Wolfram CDF Player lets anyone interact with your materials directly in a web browser--greatly increasing reader engagement and understanding. Explore some CDF examples: http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/uses-examples * Interactive reports and presentations * Infographics * Scientific journals * Textbooks * Standalone applications Or watch a brief video introduction: http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screencasts/cdf_intro -- 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
[sage-devel] ANN: Sage-Enhanced Linear Algebra Textbook
(Cross posted - just to intensify the "list condensation" discussion on sage-devel.) I may sound like a broken record, but my "add Sage to my linear algebra textbook" project is now really in a final cleaned-up form. I've moved distribution to the book web site, and will add the material to my production script in the next couple weeks. Right now there is a PDF of just new content (for the idly curious, or for bedtime reading), plus a zip file of the entire book as Sage worksheets with the new material present as code cells. Be sure to read about a few caveats if you pick up the worksheet version. http://linear.ups.edu/sage-fcla.html By the Numbers: ~45 Sage patches 95 new subsections 279 "sageexample" environments 1330 outputs doctested 12.6 seconds for full doctesting As any developer knows already, being able to doctest your work saves you from many silly little misteaks. A handful of patches remain to be reviewed and merged, see http://wiki.sagemath.org/devel/LatexToWorksheet if you can help. Similar project for Judson's abstract algebra textbook should be done in a week or two. After these associated stress-tests, I'll clean-up and document the tool chain I've used to do this. Rob -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Simplify not maintaining precision?
On Aug 1, 6:52 pm, Eviatar wrote: > This is now #11643,http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/11643. A little experimenting (see ticket) shows that Maxima itself does not keep track of precision in its bigfloats. Any computation (including just adding two numbers!) will just produce a bigfloat with precision as set by "fpprec". This even happens when adding two bigfloats with lower precision. In short, while maxima's bigfloats carry precision information with them, this is not taken into account in computations. If we want maxima's floats to act nicely with sage's precision model, we'd have to scan the expression for mpfr objects, figure out from that a reasonable precision, set fpprec to that and do the maxima computation. In your original example, you'd have to set "fpprec" to 200*ln(2)/ ln(10). -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Shall / can we reduce the number of Sage related Google groups?
Hello! On Wed, 3 Aug 2011 07:51:06 -0700 William Stein wrote: > ... Sometimes people post one word messages to > sage-flame such as "F___!", just to let off steam. > Wow! I definitely should subscribe to this one! :) Beyond jokes, I can give my - the regular Sage user - view on this question. I'm subscribed to the "sage-devel" and "sage-support" lists at the moment. I am not a developer (my only contribution into Sage is helping with the Russian translation of Sage Tutorial), I'm not a mathematician (i.e. I understand almost nothing in mathematicians' threads), but I consider the first of them ("sage-devel") as source of some kind of news about the progress in Sage development and the second one ("sage-support") as a generic source of help with the particular tasks. I'm not a Windows user either, but I'm very interested in Sage on Windows just because this is the only way I can convince my colleagues to try using Sage instead of M*. So It would be nice to hear some news on Sage-on-Windows port progress in "sage-devel". And it also seems to be pretty relevant (if one considers porting as development). Speaking of the existing diversity of mailing lists devoted to sage-related topics, it does confuse the newcomers. The most probable list for them to choose is "sage-support", I guess, because its name seems to be intuitively obvious. And yes, it's true that some threads remain unanswered even on "sage-devel" mailing list. This looks like a problem to me. Summarizing all said above, I'd like to give a small list of basic things I would like to see as a regular user. 1. I need a source of help - this means a mailing list or a forum with a quick response (like a couple of hours from the Simon King's example). (A good example of such list is gnuplot-info, where anyone can get some help on the particular problem within several hours usually). 2. I need a source of news - this means, for example, a monthly news digest about the progress in Sage development (for Windows, MacOS, GNU/Linux, Solaris - altogether). 3. I need a constant source of interest, if I may say so. This actually means constantly getting some kind of information which makes me more and more interested in using Sage and suggesting it to other people. The role of such information for me so far played the messages about new books on Sage, new web-sites, new functionality added, new components' versions, a number of bugs fixed, new translations out and so on. Everything that demonstrates that the project "breathes". Oh, and by the way, the ability to take part in any discussion in development thread is also a kind of "stimulating" thing. The user begins to *think* about what does he want Sage to look like and what way does he want Sage to be developed further. Regards, Vladimir - -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Shall / can we reduce the number of Sage related Google groups?
On Aug 3, 2011, at 07:13 , Simon King wrote: > Hi all! > > On 1 Aug., 17:18, Jason Grout wrote: >> On 8/1/11 7:19 AM, Simon King wrote: >> >>> sage-newbie, sage-solaris, sage-flame, sage-marketing and sage-edu >>> together made up for 133 posts in six months. Moving all of it to sage- >>> devel would mean an increment of about 4%. If part of it was moved to >>> sage-support instead, the increment would be even less. >> >> sage-flame is an important separate release valve for anything on sage >> lists. I certainly don't think it should be merged with anything else. >> >> +1 for disbanding sage-marketing and merging that with sage-devel. +1 >> for disbanding sage-newbie (encourage sage-support instead) and merging >> sage-solaris with sage-devel, and maybe even merging sage-windows with >> sage-devel. > > Then I ask directly: > > 1. Is it technically possible to merge two existing Google groups? > 2. Do we want less Google groups for Sage? My take on the number of google groups is that often, multiple groups end up on To/CC lists, which is a headache to those not subscribed (having to deal with bounces). So fewer is generally better. I think combining sage-nt and sage-algebra is a good idea; adding in sage-combinat-devel not so much. My sense of the latter list is it's equally divided in traffic between "broken queue", sage-combinat-specific topics, and "categorical" threads. If the latter could be taken to sage-devel (where they seem to legitimately belong), that would be good. Justin -- Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large Institute for the Enhancement of the Director's Income Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Shall / can we reduce the number of Sage related Google groups?
The view from my bike shed (not to make light of Simon initiating this discussion). I read sage-devel and sage-support on the web. No email. So the amount of traffic is almost totally irrelevant to me. The more the better. Thoughtful, descriptive subject lines would be my only requested enhancement for sage-devel (which is true most of the time). Like Simon, I would dearly love to see more "abstract nonsense" from sage-algebra, sage-nt and sage-combinat-devel appear for a wider sudience on sage-devel. And I wouldn't mind learning more number theory incidentially. I do think sage-combinat-devel serves a second purpose as a place to manage their server, patch queue, etc, but maybe that group would be inclined to move development discussion to sage- devel and keep management on sage-combinat-devel? I think it would be good to move sage-marketing onto sage-devel. The readership has a high intersection, the subject is not incomprehensible (well, on second thought...), and it would be good for the marginally-interested to be aware of efforts and/or resources in this area, and traffic is very low. There is often a temptation to cross-post, witness Jason's recent quarter-page flier. I think of sage-edu as a safe place for *users* with a specialized interest and think it serves a valuable purpose as is. For whatever reason, sage-release strikes me as good use of a standalone list, and I could imagine sysadmins using it like a sage-announce on steroids - early warnings of new releases. It wouldn't bother me if it morphed into a sage-build, but the previous point about sage-windows being useful in the future is well-taken. Thanks to Simon for starting this. OK, time to take one of my bikes out of the shed (garage) for a ride... Rob -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Shall / can we reduce the number of Sage related Google groups?
On 3 Aug., 16:13, Simon King wrote: > Hi all! > > On 1 Aug., 17:18, Jason Grout wrote: > > > On 8/1/11 7:19 AM, Simon King wrote: > > > > sage-newbie, sage-solaris, sage-flame, sage-marketing and sage-edu > > > together made up for 133 posts in six months. Moving all of it to sage- > > > devel would mean an increment of about 4%. If part of it was moved to > > > sage-support instead, the increment would be even less. > > > sage-flame is an important separate release valve for anything on sage > > lists. I certainly don't think it should be merged with anything else. > > > +1 for disbanding sage-marketing and merging that with sage-devel. +1 > > for disbanding sage-newbie (encourage sage-support instead) and merging > > sage-solaris with sage-devel, and maybe even merging sage-windows with > > sage-devel. > > Then I ask directly: > > 1. Is it technically possible to merge two existing Google groups? > 2. Do we want less Google groups for Sage? > > To summarise what I've been arguing above: > > I. > New contributors are likely to post on the big lists. Having many > small lists can lead to one of the following situations: > > (a) Experienced people are busy on the small lists, thus, read sage- > support less frequently, thus, the big lists are less responsive. > (b) Experienced people ask to move the question to one of the smaller > lists, thus, the question remains unanswered for longer than > necessary. > > Both is frustrating for novices. > > The situation four years ago was much different. Both sage-devel and > sage-support were very responsive, and that has been one major reason > for choosing Sage as a platform for my computational projects. > > II. > Having a combined list for sage-nt, sage-algebra and sage-combinat- > devel would (according to figures from the past 6 months) result in a > list with little more than 7 posts per day. That should be small > enough so that all people interested in abstract nonsense could easily > follow - actually more easily than with three lists. In particular > when interested people are only subscribed to two of them. > > III. > Moving sage-solaris, sage-flame, sage-marketing and sage-edu to sage- > devel would yield an increment of (in average) less than one post per > day on sage-devel. I believe nobody can reasonably say that such a > little increment is a "flood with tons of technical details". A single > additional post per day could easily be filtered manually (i.e., > ignored), if necessary. > > IV. > sage-marketing and sage-edu concern topics which are perhaps not in > the centre of everybody's research interests. However, most are at a > university and could occasionally contribute to sage-edu, and I guess > that most people would at least have an opinion on marketing and could > occasionally contribute to sage-marketing (ok, that could be "painting > a bike shed"). Hence, why hiding these two topics from a larger > audience, putting them into a small list? > > V. > sage-windows discusses a topic that is said to be a major goal of > Sage. Hence, why not underlining its importance? Why not raising > alertness by exposing it to the "big audience"? Thanks for summarizing the different aspects. I'd add at least two ot three though: * In a library, you don't mix (more or less) unrelated topics just because you have only a few books on topic E, F and G. Also, you wouldn't want to search the whole library when looking for books on subject D, (And searching the Google groups has already been said to be at least suboptimal.) * If Sage on Windows one day becomes what people hope, I'd expect heavy traffic on sage-windows (though many posts perhaps rather subject to sage-support or sage-release), so I'd prefer to keep that list. (Btw., the primary list for build errors is or should IMHO be sage-release, not sage-devel, to which most if not all [build-related] error messages by Sage exclusively refer to.) * The number or quantity of posts is not much an argument (unless you "unconditionally" just skip, delete or move them, like less obvious spam). Their subject line, length and content matters, too, and often it is not immediately clear from the title what the thread actually deals with, and/or the subject changes over time. So in the worst scenarios, you win nothing or even lose subscribers by merging groups, either because people keep ignoring the "new" threads or topics (and maybe even more which they otherwise would have read or responded to), or you keep people from reading and answering what they could and used to by flooding them with things they're not interested in, taking their whole time for sorting out which threads might be relevant to them, which also lowers the responsiveness. So IMHO there's no clear black and white, but only different shades of grey. The bike shed of course also always matters. ;-) -leif -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-d
Re: [sage-devel] Shall / can we reduce the number of Sage related Google groups?
Am 03.08.2011 16:13, schrieb Simon King: > Having a combined list for sage-nt, sage-algebra and sage-combinat- > devel would (according to figures from the past 6 months) result in a > list with little more than 7 posts per day. That should be small > enough so that all people interested in abstract nonsense could easily > follow - actually more easily than with three lists. In particular > when interested people are only subscribed to two of them. +1 > III. > Moving sage-solaris, sage-flame, sage-marketing and sage-edu to sage- > devel would yield an increment of (in average) less than one post per > day on sage-devel. I believe nobody can reasonably say that such a > little increment is a "flood with tons of technical details". A single > additional post per day could easily be filtered manually (i.e., > ignored), if necessary. -1 I don't see a common ground for sage-develop and sage-maketing. Looks like list should get mixed just to reduce the number of lists. > IV. > sage-marketing and sage-edu concern topics which are perhaps not in > the centre of everybody's research interests. However, most are at a > university and could occasionally contribute to sage-edu, and I guess > that most people would at least have an opinion on marketing and could > occasionally contribute to sage-marketing (ok, that could be "painting > a bike shed"). Hence, why hiding these two topics from a larger > audience, putting them into a small list? > > V. > sage-windows discusses a topic that is said to be a major goal of > Sage. Hence, why not underlining its importance? Why not raising > alertness by exposing it to the "big audience"? maybe it would be a better idea to create a new list like sage-porting where all discussions about ports to diferent OSs take place. greatz Johannes -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Shall / can we reduce the number of Sage related Google groups?
> > 2. Do we want less Google groups for Sage? > > I don't. Maybe a few less, but see William's comments below. > > To summarise what I've been arguing above: > > (a) Experienced people are busy on the small lists, thus, read sage- > > support less frequently, thus, the big lists are less responsive. > > This is not my experience. If not for the small lists, some of these > experienced people would just read *no lists*. I think that is very true. A lot of people aren't interested in sage- devel. > I don't agree that sage-support and sage-devel have become overally > noticeable less *responsive* than they were four years ago, at least I do agree that sage-support has become less responsive to certain kinds of support requests. I don't think this is because of multiple lists, or even because of ask.sagemath.org, though that might be part of it. I think it's because people who know how to answer those questions easily have tired (not in a bad way, just moved on) and do not check them as frequently, and because some of the questions have continued to be somewhat vague and computational. I know that I am reluctant to say on sage-support "here is a first idea about what is going on from a non-expert, but maybe someone else who *is* an expert will have a better idea" because many times no one has responded for a long time after I said that. In fact, I have personally had a number of sage-support requests unanswered ;-) > My impression with sage-marketing is that often the discussion is > something that doesn't feel right for having thousands of readers. (?) Who knows? Can someone find the original emails sparking the creation of sage-marketing? > Having sage-edu separate is valuable in a somewhat similar way that > having bothhttp://meta.stackoverflow.com/ > andhttp://mathoverflow.net/is valuable. Many discussions > onhttp://mathoverflow.net/are quickly +1 > Merging the sage-windows list with sage-devel is not the only way to > raise alertness. Another approach would be for somebody to post > periodic updates to sage-devel about windows porting work, along with > a note that says: "get involved by: > * subscribing to sage-windows; * downloading and building sage > following the directions athttp://xxx, etc." Same with sage-solaris. If increasing visibility in this way wouldn't ruffle feathers, I'll continue to do this, and hopefully Dave K. can with solaris (if the blocker he mentioned not too long ago is overcome, anyway). > Also, there are quite a lot of people who are highly involved with > Sage development work, and who read sage-devel, but have > (unfortunately) zero interest in porting Sage to Windows. They use OS > X or Linux, and don't want to think about the world outside that. But > I'm not in favor of barraging them with messages about porting Sage to > Windows (or Solaris or anything else), since I greatly value their > contributions to the platform-independent parts of Sage. > Though one could say the same about people who have zero interest in getting Pari or Maxima to upgrade, or getting Sage to work on Lion, yet there are discussions about these things on sage-devel :) Here it's more a matter of individual preference, perhaps? - kcrisman -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Shall / can we reduce the number of Sage related Google groups?
On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 7:13 AM, Simon King wrote: > Hi all! > > On 1 Aug., 17:18, Jason Grout wrote: >> On 8/1/11 7:19 AM, Simon King wrote: >> >> > sage-newbie, sage-solaris, sage-flame, sage-marketing and sage-edu >> > together made up for 133 posts in six months. Moving all of it to sage- >> > devel would mean an increment of about 4%. If part of it was moved to >> > sage-support instead, the increment would be even less. >> >> sage-flame is an important separate release valve for anything on sage >> lists. I certainly don't think it should be merged with anything else. >> >> +1 for disbanding sage-marketing and merging that with sage-devel. >> +1 >> for disbanding sage-newbie (encourage sage-support instead) and merging >> sage-solaris with sage-devel, and maybe even merging sage-windows with >> sage-devel. > > Then I ask directly: > > 1. Is it technically possible to merge two existing Google groups? I don't know... I really doubt it though, since Google groups don't have a lot of features. > 2. Do we want less Google groups for Sage? I don't. > > To summarise what I've been arguing above: > > I. > New contributors are likely to post on the big lists. Having many > small lists can lead to one of the following situations: > > (a) Experienced people are busy on the small lists, thus, read sage- > support less frequently, thus, the big lists are less responsive. This is not my experience. If not for the small lists, some of these experienced people would just read *no lists*. If they make the time to read the big lists, they will just read all of the lists of interest to them anyways.For example, for several months late last year *I* did not read sage-devel, since I didn't have time (and there was unfriendly discussion about certain topics, so I didn't enjoy reading it). I did still read some specialized groups like sage-nt, uwsage, etc. Now it's the summer and I do have more time for email, so now I read all the groups. > (b) Experienced people ask to move the question to one of the smaller > lists, thus, the question remains unanswered for longer than > necessary. This assumes (a), which in my experience is not necessarily true. > Both is frustrating for novices. > > The situation four years ago was much different. Both sage-devel and > sage-support were very responsive, and that has been one major reason > for choosing Sage as a platform for my computational projects. I don't agree that sage-support and sage-devel have become overally noticeable less *responsive* than they were four years ago, at least since I've been watching them closely during the last month or two, though there is less traffic (as I've observed). I think there are more subscribers to both lists today then there were in 2007. > II. > Having a combined list for sage-nt, sage-algebra and sage-combinat- > devel would (according to figures from the past 6 months) result in a > list with little more than 7 posts per day. That should be small > enough so that all people interested in abstract nonsense could easily > follow - actually more easily than with three lists. In particular > when interested people are only subscribed to two of them. As a specialist, and having read both lists recently, I have concerns about merging sage-combinat-devel with sage-nt. The discussion on sage-combinat-devel is much, much different than sage-nt, and to some extent the lists are mutually incomprehensible. Though I skim it lately (I'm reading all sage lists this summer), I usually understand little on sage-combinat-devel, and I can't imagine sage-combinat-devel readers wanting to read a lot about subtle issues involving elliptic curve point counting, say. > III. > Moving sage-solaris, sage-flame, sage-marketing and sage-edu to sage- > devel would yield an increment of (in average) less than one post per > day on sage-devel. I believe nobody can reasonably say that such a > little increment is a "flood with tons of technical details". A single > additional post per day could easily be filtered manually (i.e., > ignored), if necessary. I'm concerned about moving sage-flame to sage-devel. Many posts to sage-flame are *offensive*. This is like moving a 1am adult channel to a prime time network. Sometimes people post one word messages to sage-flame such as "F___!", just to let off steam. My impression with sage-marketing is that often the discussion is something that doesn't feel right for having thousands of readers. (?) > IV. > sage-marketing and sage-edu concern topics which are perhaps not in > the centre of everybody's research interests. However, most are at a > university and could occasionally contribute to sage-edu, and I guess > that most people would at least have an opinion on marketing and could > occasionally contribute to sage-marketing (ok, that could be "painting > a bike shed"). Hence, why hiding these two topics from a larger > audience, putting them into a small list? Having sage-edu separate is valuabl
[sage-devel] Shall / can we reduce the number of Sage related Google groups?
Hi all! On 1 Aug., 17:18, Jason Grout wrote: > On 8/1/11 7:19 AM, Simon King wrote: > > > sage-newbie, sage-solaris, sage-flame, sage-marketing and sage-edu > > together made up for 133 posts in six months. Moving all of it to sage- > > devel would mean an increment of about 4%. If part of it was moved to > > sage-support instead, the increment would be even less. > > sage-flame is an important separate release valve for anything on sage > lists. I certainly don't think it should be merged with anything else. > > +1 for disbanding sage-marketing and merging that with sage-devel. +1 > for disbanding sage-newbie (encourage sage-support instead) and merging > sage-solaris with sage-devel, and maybe even merging sage-windows with > sage-devel. Then I ask directly: 1. Is it technically possible to merge two existing Google groups? 2. Do we want less Google groups for Sage? To summarise what I've been arguing above: I. New contributors are likely to post on the big lists. Having many small lists can lead to one of the following situations: (a) Experienced people are busy on the small lists, thus, read sage- support less frequently, thus, the big lists are less responsive. (b) Experienced people ask to move the question to one of the smaller lists, thus, the question remains unanswered for longer than necessary. Both is frustrating for novices. The situation four years ago was much different. Both sage-devel and sage-support were very responsive, and that has been one major reason for choosing Sage as a platform for my computational projects. II. Having a combined list for sage-nt, sage-algebra and sage-combinat- devel would (according to figures from the past 6 months) result in a list with little more than 7 posts per day. That should be small enough so that all people interested in abstract nonsense could easily follow - actually more easily than with three lists. In particular when interested people are only subscribed to two of them. III. Moving sage-solaris, sage-flame, sage-marketing and sage-edu to sage- devel would yield an increment of (in average) less than one post per day on sage-devel. I believe nobody can reasonably say that such a little increment is a "flood with tons of technical details". A single additional post per day could easily be filtered manually (i.e., ignored), if necessary. IV. sage-marketing and sage-edu concern topics which are perhaps not in the centre of everybody's research interests. However, most are at a university and could occasionally contribute to sage-edu, and I guess that most people would at least have an opinion on marketing and could occasionally contribute to sage-marketing (ok, that could be "painting a bike shed"). Hence, why hiding these two topics from a larger audience, putting them into a small list? V. sage-windows discusses a topic that is said to be a major goal of Sage. Hence, why not underlining its importance? Why not raising alertness by exposing it to the "big audience"? 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 URL: http://www.sagemath.org
[sage-devel] Re: Bug Days: The High Priority Wishlist
On Aug 3, 4:28 am, Ivan Andrus wrote: > On Aug 3, 2011, at 2:36 AM, kcrisman wrote: > > > Anything Cygwin-related could be considered relatively high priority, > > as well as any documentation tickets getting us closer to 90%, as > > these are both goals for Sage 5.0. > > > I'd put in a plug for some of the Mac app upgrades (such as allowing > > double-clicking), but as far as I know Ivan Andrus is the only person > > who understands the Mac interface builder stuff enough to work on them > > and it looks like he's not coming :) > > Indeed I won't be there, but right now the problem (or at least the hard part > of it) is purely a notebook issue. The problem essentially boils down to > this: > > 1. Start the server > 2. Log out, but don't stop the server > 3. Open a url > likehttp://localhost:5000/upload_worksheet?url=file://localhost/Users/kar... > 4. It gives a 404. What it "should" do is ask you to login and then redirect > you to the proper url. I haven't looked into this for a while, and I'm not > sure if I opened a ticket for it or not. It would also make other things > nicer too IMHO. This, or something similar, is what is holding up http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/8473, which provides this base functionality underlying double-clicking. (Ivan, I've been finally looking at this series of tickets again!) Other voices would be great - except for this and/or the thing mentioned on that ticket, this works very nicely. - kcrisman -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: units and addition or subtraction
The division by zero is not the issue here, but the disappearance of the units when two variables with the same units are subtracted from each other. Wolfram gives 0 K for (kelvin - kelvin): http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28kelvin+-+kelvin%29 Sage would simply give 0 without any units, so that multiplication with the term (kelvin-kelvin) would give 0, too. No units. The function for a dimensional analysis without coefficients sounds like a great idea. If you could post something quick and dirty, I could see a bit better what you mean. Thanks for thinking about it, anyway! Stan On Aug 3, 12:21 pm, Eviatar wrote: > I don't think there is an easy way. > > It seems that in Mathematica division by zero does not return an > error, simply evaluates to infinity (http://www.wolframalpha.com/ > input/?i=1%2F0), which only makes sense if you are using the limit > definition of equality. > > So essentially, the way to fix this in Sage would be to have units be > "special" symbolic variables when evaluating limits, so that > > sage: limit(1 / x, x=units.length.meter.mul(0, hold=True)) > Infinity > > would return Infinity*meter instead. I think this would be quite hard > to do. > > The other option would be to operator overload the UnitExpression > class or modify the behaviour of symbolic variables when they are > detected to be units. In any case, dividing by zero would still return > an error. > > Maybe it would be useful to have a function that just does dimensional > analysis and ignores coefficients? This wouldn't be hard to write. > > On Aug 3, 12:40 am, Stan Schymanski wrote: > > > > > > > > > Yes, this makes sense to me. Wolfram seems to treat the expression and > > the units separately, which makes sense. In your example, any omitted > > value is seen as 1, so the result is perfectly correct. The expression > > is evaluated and the units are added after it, but they don't cancel > > out by subtraction. I don't think it is sensible to treat units as > > variables if this leads to results like the one I encountered. Then > > nothing is gained by using the units package and I could just create > > my own variables called m, K, J, W etc. Is there an easy way to get a > > behaviour like in Mathematica? > > > On Aug 2, 9:29 pm, Eviatar wrote: > > > > It seems WolframAlpha evaluates the limit of the > > > expression:http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28calorie%2Fcentimeter%5E2%2F+m > > > > On Aug 2, 12:21 pm, Eviatar wrote: > > > > > I don't really see this as a bug. Units are treated as variables, so > > > > it makes sense. Are you suggesting that 0 * kelvin should be left > > > > unevaluated, and then not give an error when it is the denominator? > > > > > On Aug 2, 7:49 am, Stan Schymanski wrote: > > > > > > Dear all, > > > > > > This is a bug-report or feature request for the units package, taken > > > > > from sage-support. Basically, the units package does not handle > > > > > addition and subtraction in a sensible way, as units cancel out when > > > > > variables with the same units are subtracted from each other. Sage > > > > > should give an error message when adding or subtracting variables with > > > > > different units, while leaving the units intact if the variables have > > > > > the same units. Does anyone have an idea how this could be > > > > > accomplished? Thanks already! > > > > > > Below is an example of the problem posted > > > > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-support/browse_thread/thread/a60c... > > > > > > sage: udict = {} > > > > > sage: udict[H_l] = units.energy.calorie/units.length.centimeter^2/ > > > > > units.time.minute > > > > > sage: udict[T_a] = units.temperature.kelvin > > > > > sage: udict[T_l] = units.temperature.kelvin > > > > > sage: soln = solve(H_l == h_c*(T_a - T_l), h_c)[0]; soln > > > > > h_c == H_l/(T_a - T_l) > > > > > sage: soln.subs(udict) > > > > > Traceback (most recent call last): > > > > > ... > > > > > RuntimeError: power::eval(): division by zero > > > > > > --- > > > > > This works: > > > > > sage: (H_l/T_a).subs(udict) > > > > > calorie/(centimeter^2*kelvin*minute) -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: units and addition or subtraction
Ah, yes, thanks. Didn't realise. On Aug 3, 11:08 am, Maarten Derickx wrote: > no it's not trickier then you thought. That is just one of the outputs, > wolfram alpha tries to convert units in what it calls basic units (I guess > they have chosen an independend subset of units so that all others can be > expressed in them). There are also other outputs which make more sense. -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: units and addition or subtraction
I don't think there is an easy way. It seems that in Mathematica division by zero does not return an error, simply evaluates to infinity (http://www.wolframalpha.com/ input/?i=1%2F0), which only makes sense if you are using the limit definition of equality. So essentially, the way to fix this in Sage would be to have units be "special" symbolic variables when evaluating limits, so that sage: limit(1 / x, x=units.length.meter.mul(0, hold=True)) Infinity would return Infinity*meter instead. I think this would be quite hard to do. The other option would be to operator overload the UnitExpression class or modify the behaviour of symbolic variables when they are detected to be units. In any case, dividing by zero would still return an error. Maybe it would be useful to have a function that just does dimensional analysis and ignores coefficients? This wouldn't be hard to write. On Aug 3, 12:40 am, Stan Schymanski wrote: > Yes, this makes sense to me. Wolfram seems to treat the expression and > the units separately, which makes sense. In your example, any omitted > value is seen as 1, so the result is perfectly correct. The expression > is evaluated and the units are added after it, but they don't cancel > out by subtraction. I don't think it is sensible to treat units as > variables if this leads to results like the one I encountered. Then > nothing is gained by using the units package and I could just create > my own variables called m, K, J, W etc. Is there an easy way to get a > behaviour like in Mathematica? > > On Aug 2, 9:29 pm, Eviatar wrote: > > > > > > > > > It seems WolframAlpha evaluates the limit of the > > expression:http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28calorie%2Fcentimeter%5E2%2F+m > > > On Aug 2, 12:21 pm, Eviatar wrote: > > > > I don't really see this as a bug. Units are treated as variables, so > > > it makes sense. Are you suggesting that 0 * kelvin should be left > > > unevaluated, and then not give an error when it is the denominator? > > > > On Aug 2, 7:49 am, Stan Schymanski wrote: > > > > > Dear all, > > > > > This is a bug-report or feature request for the units package, taken > > > > from sage-support. Basically, the units package does not handle > > > > addition and subtraction in a sensible way, as units cancel out when > > > > variables with the same units are subtracted from each other. Sage > > > > should give an error message when adding or subtracting variables with > > > > different units, while leaving the units intact if the variables have > > > > the same units. Does anyone have an idea how this could be > > > > accomplished? Thanks already! > > > > > Below is an example of the problem posted > > > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-support/browse_thread/thread/a60c... > > > > > sage: udict = {} > > > > sage: udict[H_l] = units.energy.calorie/units.length.centimeter^2/ > > > > units.time.minute > > > > sage: udict[T_a] = units.temperature.kelvin > > > > sage: udict[T_l] = units.temperature.kelvin > > > > sage: soln = solve(H_l == h_c*(T_a - T_l), h_c)[0]; soln > > > > h_c == H_l/(T_a - T_l) > > > > sage: soln.subs(udict) > > > > Traceback (most recent call last): > > > > ... > > > > RuntimeError: power::eval(): division by zero > > > > > --- > > > > This works: > > > > sage: (H_l/T_a).subs(udict) > > > > calorie/(centimeter^2*kelvin*minute) -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: quarter-page flier
On 3 Aug., 11:14, leif wrote: > Hmmm, the font looks poor and not very well-designed (most disturbing > the kerning, as if some letters had been typeset manually or by M$ > Word). Note that I was referring to the png, not the PDF, which looks slightly better. -leif -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: quarter-page flier
On 3 Aug., 10:15, Maarten Derickx wrote: > Cool! > > I think the bottom looks a bit to busy with the graph and the slogan stuffed > together like that, this feeling is slightly strengthened by using 4 > different lettertypes (maybe some of them are the same, but at least they > feel very different. The upper half part looks really neat tough. Hmmm, the font looks poor and not very well-designed (most disturbing the kerning, as if some letters had been typeset manually or by M$ Word). I'd perhaps also use a different, monospaced font for the "URL". > Maybe the slogan could be shortened on this one to be able to make the size > of the font larger. I would remove the viable and free, since every projects > tries to be viable I guess and free is implied by open source. But maybe > some people object to that. Well, "free" and "open source" are -- at least in principle -- orthogonal properties; there's a lot of free software with closed source, and there used to be also open source software (not in the sense of open to contributing) which wasn't free, i.e. which one had to license. The symbols are ok, but I would omit the background graphic. -leif -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: units and addition or subtraction
no it's not trickier then you thought. That is just one of the outputs, wolfram alpha tries to convert units in what it calls basic units (I guess they have chosen an independend subset of units so that all others can be expressed in them). There are also other outputs which make more sense. -- 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
Re: [sage-devel] Re: Bug Days: The High Priority Wishlist
On Aug 3, 2011, at 2:36 AM, kcrisman wrote: > Anything Cygwin-related could be considered relatively high priority, > as well as any documentation tickets getting us closer to 90%, as > these are both goals for Sage 5.0. > > I'd put in a plug for some of the Mac app upgrades (such as allowing > double-clicking), but as far as I know Ivan Andrus is the only person > who understands the Mac interface builder stuff enough to work on them > and it looks like he's not coming :) Indeed I won't be there, but right now the problem (or at least the hard part of it) is purely a notebook issue. The problem essentially boils down to this: 1. Start the server 2. Log out, but don't stop the server 3. Open a url like http://localhost:5000/upload_worksheet?url=file://localhost/Users/karl-dietercrisman/Desktop/Test.sws 4. It gives a 404. What it "should" do is ask you to login and then redirect you to the proper url. I haven't looked into this for a while, and I'm not sure if I opened a ticket for it or not. It would also make other things nicer too IMHO. -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
[sage-devel] Re: units and addition or subtraction
EDIT: Nooo, I don't want a behaviour like in Wolfram Alpha. Check this out: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28calorie%2Fcentimeter^2%2F+minute%29%2F%281kelvin-2kelvin%29 By inserting numbers that lead to a negative denominator, suddenly I got units of time^-3! Maybe it's trickier than I thought... On Aug 3, 9:40 am, Stan Schymanski wrote: > Yes, this makes sense to me. Wolfram seems to treat the expression and > the units separately, which makes sense. In your example, any omitted > value is seen as 1, so the result is perfectly correct. The expression > is evaluated and the units are added after it, but they don't cancel > out by subtraction. I don't think it is sensible to treat units as > variables if this leads to results like the one I encountered. Then > nothing is gained by using the units package and I could just create > my own variables called m, K, J, W etc. Is there an easy way to get a > behaviour like in Mathematica? > > On Aug 2, 9:29 pm, Eviatar wrote: > > > > > > > > > It seems WolframAlpha evaluates the limit of the > > expression:http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28calorie%2Fcentimeter%5E2%2F+m > > > On Aug 2, 12:21 pm, Eviatar wrote: > > > > I don't really see this as a bug. Units are treated as variables, so > > > it makes sense. Are you suggesting that 0 * kelvin should be left > > > unevaluated, and then not give an error when it is the denominator? > > > > On Aug 2, 7:49 am, Stan Schymanski wrote: > > > > > Dear all, > > > > > This is a bug-report or feature request for the units package, taken > > > > from sage-support. Basically, the units package does not handle > > > > addition and subtraction in a sensible way, as units cancel out when > > > > variables with the same units are subtracted from each other. Sage > > > > should give an error message when adding or subtracting variables with > > > > different units, while leaving the units intact if the variables have > > > > the same units. Does anyone have an idea how this could be > > > > accomplished? Thanks already! > > > > > Below is an example of the problem posted > > > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-support/browse_thread/thread/a60c... > > > > > sage: udict = {} > > > > sage: udict[H_l] = units.energy.calorie/units.length.centimeter^2/ > > > > units.time.minute > > > > sage: udict[T_a] = units.temperature.kelvin > > > > sage: udict[T_l] = units.temperature.kelvin > > > > sage: soln = solve(H_l == h_c*(T_a - T_l), h_c)[0]; soln > > > > h_c == H_l/(T_a - T_l) > > > > sage: soln.subs(udict) > > > > Traceback (most recent call last): > > > > ... > > > > RuntimeError: power::eval(): division by zero > > > > > --- > > > > This works: > > > > sage: (H_l/T_a).subs(udict) > > > > calorie/(centimeter^2*kelvin*minute) -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: quarter-page flier
Cool! I think the bottom looks a bit to busy with the graph and the slogan stuffed together like that, this feeling is slightly strengthened by using 4 different lettertypes (maybe some of them are the same, but at least they feel very different. The upper half part looks really neat tough. Maybe the slogan could be shortened on this one to be able to make the size of the font larger. I would remove the viable and free, since every projects tries to be viable I guess and free is implied by open source. But maybe some people object to that. -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: quarter-page flier
Cool! I think the bottom looks a bit to busy with the graph and the slogan stuffed together like that, this feeling is slightly strengthened. But the upper part looks really neat. -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: Bug Days: The High Priority Wishlist
On 2 Aug., 19:09, William Stein wrote: > There is now a "high priority wishlist" of bugs/issues to work on for > Sage Days 32 (Bug Days): > > http://wiki.sagemath.org/days32/wishlist > > Of course, if anybody wants to start early, work remotely, etc., please do! Should perhaps be called Sage WishDays? ;-) I've added the corresponding tickets for MPIR (#8664, #11616 for newer / latest upstream releases) to the wiki page (the latter needing testing / review). Both tickets depend on #5847 (GMP-ECM 6.3) which again needs review of a rebased one-line patch to the Sage library (only the after-context changed, cf. http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/8664#comment:121). If no-one beats me, I'll open a ticket for upgrading MPFR to 3.0.1 + latest upstream patches, and rewrite its spkg-install. -leif -- 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
[sage-devel] Re: units and addition or subtraction
Yes, this makes sense to me. Wolfram seems to treat the expression and the units separately, which makes sense. In your example, any omitted value is seen as 1, so the result is perfectly correct. The expression is evaluated and the units are added after it, but they don't cancel out by subtraction. I don't think it is sensible to treat units as variables if this leads to results like the one I encountered. Then nothing is gained by using the units package and I could just create my own variables called m, K, J, W etc. Is there an easy way to get a behaviour like in Mathematica? On Aug 2, 9:29 pm, Eviatar wrote: > It seems WolframAlpha evaluates the limit of the > expression:http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28calorie%2Fcentimeter%5E2%2F+m > > On Aug 2, 12:21 pm, Eviatar wrote: > > > > > > > > > I don't really see this as a bug. Units are treated as variables, so > > it makes sense. Are you suggesting that 0 * kelvin should be left > > unevaluated, and then not give an error when it is the denominator? > > > On Aug 2, 7:49 am, Stan Schymanski wrote: > > > > Dear all, > > > > This is a bug-report or feature request for the units package, taken > > > from sage-support. Basically, the units package does not handle > > > addition and subtraction in a sensible way, as units cancel out when > > > variables with the same units are subtracted from each other. Sage > > > should give an error message when adding or subtracting variables with > > > different units, while leaving the units intact if the variables have > > > the same units. Does anyone have an idea how this could be > > > accomplished? Thanks already! > > > > Below is an example of the problem posted > > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-support/browse_thread/thread/a60c... > > > > sage: udict = {} > > > sage: udict[H_l] = units.energy.calorie/units.length.centimeter^2/ > > > units.time.minute > > > sage: udict[T_a] = units.temperature.kelvin > > > sage: udict[T_l] = units.temperature.kelvin > > > sage: soln = solve(H_l == h_c*(T_a - T_l), h_c)[0]; soln > > > h_c == H_l/(T_a - T_l) > > > sage: soln.subs(udict) > > > Traceback (most recent call last): > > > ... > > > RuntimeError: power::eval(): division by zero > > > > --- > > > This works: > > > sage: (H_l/T_a).subs(udict) > > > calorie/(centimeter^2*kelvin*minute) -- 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