On Jan 23, 2008, at 6:08 PM, William Stein wrote: > 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 ...
Sorry, I stand corrected... This is one case where I think __str__ != __repr__ is good. >> 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. Overall, I think it's a good move too. >> 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. So should we get rid of view then? - Robert --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
