I came from Blender to SAGE and was taken aback by the state of the graphcial tools. It makes me very happy to read this message:
On Thursday, March 8, 2012 2:29:23 PM UTC-8, William wrote: > > > GENERAL CONTEXT: Currently, Sage by default uses JMOL > (http://jmol.sourceforge.net/) to display 3d graphics. This is a weak > link for Sage, because Jmol is a very complicated Java applet, so on > many platforms it crashes web browsers, won't run at all, is unstable, > etc. For example, Jmol doesn't work at all on iPhones and iPads, and > probably never will. Moreover, selecting objects and manipulating them > is very hard, as is evidenced by nobody ever having succeeded in doing > so for Sage, despite much demand. The future of 3d for the web is > WebGL, which has some support by modern browsers and hardware. The > three.js is a Javascript library that allows one to describe a 3d > scene and interact with it purely from Javascript. Moreover, the > scene can be rendered in any browser that supports HTML5's canvas2d, > which is essentially all modern browsers, though it will render more > quickly when WebGL is available. The goal of this project is to do a > complete reimplement of 3d rendering for Sage using three.js, which > fully replicates all functionality that Jmol offered, so that three.js > can instead be the default. > > PREREQUISITES: Javascript. Python. Foundations of 3d computer > graphics. Familiarity with 3d plotting in Sage. Calculus. No > advanced mathematics knowledge is needed. > > MENTOR: William Stein > > BACKUP MENTOR: Jason Grout > It wouldn't hurt to make a fuss about this, generate some more noise. I've dug through a lot of SAGE documentation over the last month without running into so much as a peep about the (poor) state of the display methods. To this point, I have found it easier and faster to render entire scenes of geometric arguments in Blender -- with lighting and fully manipulable 3D objects, textures, materials-- than get a basic, manipulable plot in SAGE. I am so glad this is a major goal. I don't think it takes away from the advances SAGE has made to be blunt about this, and point vigorously to future changes like this. The tools are desperately needed. I listen to Sal say he just doesn't know where to find a good, free, general plotting program to use in his videos, repeatedly when I visit Khan Academy. Meanwhile, half of the reason I decided to use SAGE is because I love caging myself with bitterly difficult problems. Given the choice, I'll work out the mechanics from scratch anyway, for the practice. :) Most people don't. :( I will be able to help soon. So much still to learn. -- 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 URL: http://www.sagemath.org
