On the notion of publicity, the following presentation might help: http://www.slideshare.net/coolstuff/the-brand-gap. It makes a lot of very smart points on how one might want to present SAGE for maximal effect. It takes about ten minutes of your time.
Georg Muntingh. On Apr 13, 9:05 am, "William Stein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > > Within one year, I would like to push for SAGE to have at least ten thousand > serious users instead of only a few hundred users (I estimate there are < 400 > users of SAGE in the world today). I think the following are the main > priorities > if we want to make this happen: > > 1. Installation: > > - LINUX: We need .deb source and binary package for > Debian/Ubuntu-based Linux machines that installs sage to /opt/sage. A > minimum requirement for this > package is that absolutely anybody on a Debian system with the appropriate > Debian package tools can create this deb, e.g., by typing something > like "sage -bdistdeb filename.deb"; no further work should be needed. > > - LINUX: We need an .rpm src and binary package for Redhat-based systems. > The issues are similar to for a deb. > > - OS X: We need an .app bundle for SAGE, i.e., a way to create a > .app directory structure, so users get a single icon that they can > drag anywhere, e.g., their /Applications folder. Double clicking on > the icon should start a SAGE notebook server and pop up a copy of SAGE > running in Firefox, or complain that Firefox must be installed. The > notebook server should just run in the background, and should turn > itself off if it isn't used for 1 hour. The SAGE Notebook should very > clearly > report what happens if the notebook server disappears. It is > critical that either this .app bundle be creatable on OS X in an > automated fashion that anybody with OS X and xcode can do by typing > "sage -bdistosx filename-2.4.2.pkg" say. > > - MS Windows: We need a .msi installer that installs cygwin and > SAGE together to a uers's directory. Gary Zablackis used to make one > of this, but he is no longer contributing to SAGE, unfortunately. > Nobody has volunteered to take over. Creation of this installer > should be as automated as possible, optimally do-able entirely from > SAGE/Cygwin by typing a command in SAGE or from Cygwin. > > 2. The Notebook: > > - It *needs* to be redone using Twisted, or at least some sort of > more robust multi-threaded or asynchronous I/O model that supports ssl > connections. > - There are several major problems with the GUI that need to be addressed: > * The edit mode has two problems: (1) images aren't preserved; > (2) one can't always insert new cells between html text. > * The textarea's need to be replaced by a full-fledged code > editor with syntax highlighting, autoindent, etc. Tom Boothby is > working on this. > * Saving and loading of worksheets needs to be revamped. > * Printing should use pdflatex, etc.; this would look vastly > better. Also, export (and import) of worksheets and notebooks to > latex should be trivial. > > - Full text doc and source search needs to be optimized. I just > wrote a 2-liner using grep, but Alex Clemesha has some good SQLite > code that should replace this. Alternatively, maybe there is an > indexing extension to grep (??). > > 3. Symbolic Calculus: > - Aside from section 1 above on installation, this is the most > important thing for SAGE to be useful to a wide range of people. > - A first release of this is very close. I would have released it > already, but > when stress testing Bobby's latest version I quickly discovered some issues > with the Maxima <--> SAGE interface that have to be resolved, > probably via some very unpleasant and tricky pexpect hacking. :-( > - Making Symbolic Calculus fast and robust enough is going to > require some very serious work and minimizing or eliminating > dependence on Maxima. Fortunately symbolic computer algebra is fairly > well studied and well understood... > > 4. Bugs: > - SAGE still has way way too many bugs. > - The patch referee system is helping greatly so far. Many thanks > for all the volunteers who have helped with this! > - Everybody who considers sending me code -- please, please, please > strive for the absolutely highest quality you can. Write doctests for > every function. Create a TESTS section in docstrings with even more > tests. Create an automated testing function. Etc. > > 5. Publicity: > I think what is needed to grow the user base to > 10K is the following: > - Please, write journal articles, books, and papers (both research > and aimed at undergrads) that have snippets of SAGE code or mention > how to use SAGE. Naturally, I'm doing this a lot (my modular forms > book has SAGE code, and I'm redoing my elementary number theory book > to use SAGE before it gets published), etc. If you write foo.tex > with SAGE code in verbatim blocks, you can do "sage -t foo.tex" and it > will doctest your file for you. > - Articles like the blog post Georg wrote recently are excellent publicity. > - We should create a nice general and very pretty SAGE poster, then > print up a few hundred and send them to all people on sage-devel to > post in their places of employment, etc. > - Give talks at conferences and mention SAGE. > > 6. Commutative Algebra and Linear Algebra: > - Martin Albrecht is doing excellent work laying the groundwork to > make polynomial arithmetic, etc., in SAGE superb. > - Linear algebra is also going reasonably well, in that the overall > situation is finally reasonably good, after a year of serious pain. > > ----- > > Most development work on SAGE right now is on advanced > research-related algorithms, not on the issues listed above. I'm very > proud of this work, and I see it as our greatest strength -- it > distinguishes SAGE as a technology from Maple/Mathematica/MATLAB. > Keep up the great work! > > If you're interested in seriously helping with anything listed above > (or have a student who can -- most work on the above points so > far has been done by undergraduates!), please reply to this email and > explain your interest, or email me. > > William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
