On Jan 23, 2008 6:00 PM, Robert Bradshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Jan 23, 2008, at 5:53 PM, Jason Grout wrote: > > > Hi everyone, > > > > What is the difference between x.plot() and x.show() for an object x? > > For that matter, what about view()? Of course, right now it > > depends on > > the object, but what is the general guideline? > > > > I'm refactoring a patch that rlm just posted that adds show(list of > > graphs) functionality to show. I'm making it so that show(list of > > anything) recursively plots the items of the list and displays a tiled > > array of the item plots. However, I don't know how to generically > > plot > > an item and get the graphic output without displaying that plot. I > > can > > do [i.plot() for i in list], but what about objects that don't have a > > plot function, but do have a show() function? > > x.plot() returns a plot object, which can be stored, composed with > other plot objects, etc. x.show() actually renders the plot and shows > it (e.g. in the notebook, or poping up the rendered .png, etc). Show > also produces non-plot data, e.g. latexing with jsmath for symbolic > expressions in the notebook. For instance, if E is an elliptic curve, > E.show() is a latexed representation, while E.plot() is a plot. > > Recently, the __str__ command of a plot object has been modified to > call self.show().
Actually I modified the _repr_ method. The __str__ method is as before, so if you do sage: print x.plot() you go something like GraphicsObject ... > This is nice because one doesn't have to type > > x.plot().show() > > anymore, but does make things a bit more confusing, and it is a bit > unsettling that just printing an object starts up an external Indeed. But I think it does make things a lot easier to just use, and reduces a lot of unnecessary typing (and makes plotting work more like in Mathematica). Also new users who just want to learn graphics just have to learn a few plot commands, and they get lots out of that immediately; they don't have to learn both "plot" and "show", and exactly how to combine them just to get going. > program. I don't know about view, but I don't think that's very > standard. view and show were both on about equal footing nearly 3 years ago. There doesn't seem much of a point for view though. view versus show was supposed to be something like $ ... $ versus $$ ... $$ in latex. -- 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://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
