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. 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. Maurizio > > > 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 > > > -- > > 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 > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > > URL:http://www.sagemath.org > > -- > William Stein > Professor of Mathematics > University of Washingtonhttp://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
