On Mar 22, 11:48 pm, Minh Nguyen <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Hazem,
>
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 3:28 AM, Hazem <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Forgot to add that we would need to include some kind of spreadsheet-
> > like capability, which is quite useful and convenient when one wants
> > to create/edit matrices and arrays.
>
> Yes, there has been discussion about this on sage-devel, and maybe on
> sage-support. From memory, some folks have posted proof-of-concept
> stuff, but I may be wrong. I think David Joyner is one of the people
> who have worked on a spreadsheet-like capability.
>
Sage-applied (what I use to refer to the proposed distribution) does
not need to have this in the first few versions, but it should be high
on the list of priorities. I wonder if code from Gnumeric or calc can
be adapted.
>
> > On Mar 22, 11:23 pm, Hazem <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Thank you all for your feedback.
>
> >> I agree that maintaining anoher version of Sage is probably spreading
> >> current resources too thin. I was asking to see if this was indeed the
> >> case. On the other hand, an engineering and physics oriented Sage
> >> could help boost Sage and bring in more resources from a largely
> >> untapped and enthusiastic audience. We would be competing more
> >> directly with Mathematica in particular, and other packages (MATLAB,
> >> etc.) in general, and making alot of waves and getting more attention
> >> that way.
>
> >> We could start simply by packaging a version of Sage that is smaller
> >> and drops most of the parts that are not widely used by most applied
> >> scientists and engineers, and emphasizes other packages and
> >> capabilities found in MATLAB for example. Documentation would
> >> necessarily have to be written or adapted with applied scientists in
> >> mind, and an aggressive promotion campaign among users of commercial
> >> computation software would be necessary.
>
> >> This version of Sage would be based on the main version, but would be
> >> a subset of it for simplicity's sake, more or less, with some optional
> >> packages treated as standard. It would be important not to include
> >> packages that have overlapping functionality, but choose only one of
> >> them. The distribution must be kept relatively small both for size and
> >> to keep it less confusing to a newbie. More integration would come
> >> with time.
>
> Since the Windows port of Sage is currently underway and in its early
> stages, perhaps anyone who actually considers features and packages
> for physics/engineering/numerical stuff might consider working on
> those packages first in the Windows port. I'm saying this because the
> Windows port is rather small at the moment, something like 70MB at the
> moment with version 0.3.3. So while it's still small and manageable,
> one might be able to support engineering capabilities. Furthermore,
> because Windows is more familiar to many engineers (I may be wrong
> here), supporting engineering features in the Windows port is a good
> idea. For more info on the Windows port, please refer to this site:
>
> http://windows.sagemath.org/
I don't think that would be the best way to go about it. For one
thing, Linux is quite popular in scientific circles, and for another,
I don't want to promote a big split between Sage-main and Sage-
applied. The starting point should be the same, and if we end up with
2 Sage-Windows distributions, then so be it.
>
> >> One great "selling" feature would be Cython, which provides the
> >> possibility to achive high computation speeds coupled with a nice and
> >> clean programming language. This is a big consideration for engineers
> >> and applied scientists and it is noteworhy that Python already has a
> >> growing user base among them. With Scilab we can even offer a MATLAB-
> >> like language as an option or as part of a mixed environment. Symbolic
> >> capabilties can be handled by a subset of the packages already offered
> >> (or soon to be offered) by Sage.
>
> >> I know what you are going to say: "Hazem, whya don't you do it?"
>
> >> I would love to, but honestly my time does not permit, even if I knew
> >> how to do it. I will keep it i mind, though.
>
> From my perspective, there are many things I want to implement at the
> moment and I have at least 3 hrs per day to work on Sage, but I don't
> have necessary resources. So in a sense, I sort of understand what
> you're saying here.
>
> As regards Scilab and Sage, I think that Ronan Paixão has worked on a
> Sage-Scilab interface. From my reading of the Scilab license, I think
> it can be legally problematic to include Scilab in Sage, but I'm not a
> lawyer. David Joyner knows more about software licenses than I do.
My understanding is that the current Scilab is licenced under CeCILL,
which is GPL-compatible.
>
> >> We can advertise for volunteers to take over and run the project, at
> >> least.
Perhaps we can get an outside sponsor for this project?
>
> --
> Regards
> Minh Van Nguyen
Thanks Minh,
Hazem
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