On Dec 3, 2008, at 7:54 PM, Jason Grout wrote: > Robert Bradshaw wrote: > >>> Another way to do it might be to have classes like Integrate (as >>> opposed >>> to functions), that represent an integral. >> >> I'm not a fan of making such a distinction based on the >> capitalization of the first letter, but it would make sense to have >> integral (the noun) be unevaluated, and integrate (the verb) actually >> do the work. > > That presupposes a good working knowledge of the English language (at > least the subset having to do with mathematics), which may not be a > bad > thing, but also puts up another barrier to new users. I know that > probably half of my ODE class would say that the verb associated with > "derivative" is "derive" (well, at least at the start of the semester; > hopefully they don't have that association anymore). > > The nice thing about the capital letter is that there is only one > command name, and a very systematic tweak that changes it from > active to > inert. Actually, since python style is to have camel-case class > names, > but lowercase functions, using camelcase for the inert versions > (constructing a class object) would fit rather nicely. In other > words, > Integrate constructs an integral object, while integrate is a function > that you call and it returns an answer.
This requires good working knowledge of python style, which is even rarer than good working knowledge of English :). Of all the options, I think passing a keyword like "unevaluated=True" is the best one so far. It's certainly going to be the less common desired behavior, and I think. sage: latex(integral(x+x, x, unevaluated=True)) '\int 2x dx' is natural despite having simplified the x+x. - Robert --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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-support URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
