Sage is definitively more focused on mathematics and Scilab is more for physicist and engineers which do more of numerical exercises. I needed a free software to analyze signal data and I have looked into various packages including Scilab, Sage, Octave, Freemat, etc. For the moment I have selected Scilab since I used Matlab at the University and got used to its programming language and stepping over to Scilab is a small step. Furthermore Scilab seems to get a lot of support from the governments and research consortia and and with downloads numbers of over 40000 per month it looks like it will stay. However, I have to admit that Scilab still has a long way to go. The support (e.g. forums, documentation) and the user interface is rather poor and it feels less intuitive compared to Matlab. Perhaps the coming release will show some considerable improvements, but I think considerable improvements can be made in support in the form of forums, documentation, script exchange, etc. Although Sage is designed for mathematicians it can do number crunching. However, most Sage tutorials are very much focussed on maths it is difficult to get into it as a physicist/engineer. Personal I am intrigued by Sage. One of the main reason is that the language is Python and such that Sage can be extended with thousands of libraries including GUIs, support for Fortran, C++, etc. Furthermore I believe that Sage has better graphics support which is a big plus over Scilab since at the end of the calculations you will need to produce a graph At the moment I keep working with Scilab since I can work with it without learning to much new things, but I have spend some time using Sage and if Scilab 5 does not show the improvements I would like to see I probably lean very hard towards Sage.
By the way it has been mentioned several times on Sage websites that Scilab is not open source in the true meaning of the word. If you read the license agreement carefully you will find that commercialization of the code requires authorization i.e. you can't use the code to create your own Matlab/Mathematica to sell it to consumers and any derived/composite versions need to say copyright Scilab Enri (or something like that). Is that a big deal ... it is free advertisement for the institute and more money will finds it way to the project!? I guess I am rambling a bit, but in conclusion: Scilab and Sage are different packages with each pros and cons, both seem to have a good foundation (from community and government) and will be around for the coming years and maybe decades. Physicists/engineers probably will prefer Scilab whereas Scilab is not really an option for mathematicians. As physicist I have to acknowledge that Sage has some good trump card and if Scilab does not improve I will really consider using Sage for professional use rather than just interest. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-edu" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
