I would vote for consistency over convenience every time. I am
forever forgetting the * for multiplication, but I'm glad the implicit-
multiplication feature has to be consciously turned on - and I don't
plan on ever turning it on. ;-)
I don't want to reopen the debate over the variable 'x' being pre-
defined, but maybe the following proposal/example would be useful.
Consider the new user who happily plots with the variable x several
times, and then tries
sage: parametric_plot( (t,t^2), 0, 1)
to get back
NameError: name 't' is not defined
Wouldn't it be clearer if the error message read
NameError: name 't' is not defined, try var('t') beforehand
or something similar?
Perhaps as Carl deprecates common anticipated behaviors he'd be open
to having his patch adjust the permanent error messages (not just the
deprecation warnings) to give advice on the correct syntax/usage when
possible. I'm starting to see some of this in Ubuntu Linux and the
error messages are giving hints that took me hours to discover on my
own a couple years ago.
Rob
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