I'll help; and I'm pretty familiar (as a user) with the algebra / combinatorics bits.
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007, William Stein wrote: > > Hello, > > I think SAGE might potentially greatly benefit from certain types of new > documentation. Unfortunately, after consider a number of possibilities, > I'm unsure about how to proceed. I'll discuss the best idea Josh Kantor > and I came up with below. Let me know what you think, or suggest > something else if you have any other ideas, or let me know what your > concerns are (or if you would like to volunteer some writing). > > We could create a new manual, similar in format to the "SAGE > Tutorial", "SAGE Reference > manual", etc., but instead entitled "SAGE Overview". This latex document > might > have chapters entitled as follows, and primary contributors as listed > to the right: > * Calculus -- me, Bobby Moretti, ?? > * Combinatorics -- Robert Miller, Emily Kirkman > * Algebra -- Martin Albrecht, David Joyner > * Number Theory -- William Stein, Jaap Spies, David Kohel > * Linear Algebra -- Josh Kantor, Robert Bradshaw, William Stein > * Numerical Computation -- Josh Kantor > * Plotting -- Tom Boothby, Josh Kantor, Me, Alex Clemesha > > Each chapter would have a few paragraphs that overview what one can do > in SAGE related to each topic, followed by sections that go into more detail > with examples. This is probably a very rough prototype of the sort of > information the numerical computation chapter might provide: > http://www.math.washington.edu/~jkantor/C_Fortran/C_Fortran.html > > The idea is that if you're a new users to SAGE, after getting > some very basic feeling for SAGE, you flip directly to the relevant > chapter of the book *for you*, e.g., if you do algebra you read that > chapter, if you do calculus you read the calculus chapter, etc. > And in reading that chapter, you get a pretty good sense of > what SAGE is capable in your specialty, where to find further > documentation (e.g., when you read about number theory, > you learn that SAGE includes NTL, that NTL can do blah, > and that you can find out more at location xyz). Also, there > are some (but not too many) doctested examples throughout. > > What do people think? People would contribute to this document > using hg_doc patches, just like they do now with tutorial, etc., > contributions. > > An alternative would be to create short books for each topical > area. This might be more manageable, or it might be less > manageable; I'm not sure. > > -- > William Stein > Associate Professor of Mathematics > University of Washington > http://www.williamstein.org > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
