jupyter-jsmol <https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/spkg/jupyter_jsmol.html#spkg-jupyter-jsmol> is the current standard package providing javascript version of Jmol (which I proposed to demote to optional in https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/qKqTmLzHAbg, https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/38504). I propose to demote it to "optional". (In https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/qKqTmLzHAbg/m/OwGjF4GiBQAJ (2020), Antonio Rojas already asked if there is any reason for not making jsmol optional too because three.js <https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/spkg/threejs.html#spkg-threejs> is our default 3d renderer.)
tachyon <https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/spkg/tachyon.html#spkg-tachyon> is a standard package providing a raytracer, dating back to 1994. It has a precarious maintenance status. Fedora has orphaned this package, and it is not available in the current release 40 (https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/tachyon), Debian has an extensive set of patches that have not been upstreamed (https://sources.debian.org/patches/tachyon/0.99~b6+dsx-12/). The Arch Linux package (https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/tachyon/) is maintained by Antonio Rojas; sage is listed as the only package depending on it. I propose to demote this package to optional as well. Jmol (not jupyter-jsmol) and Tachyon serve the purpose of saving 3d graphics as png files, in particular for our PDF documentation. I propose to replace this function (exclusively provided by these two packages in Sage) by using the tool Playwright, which installs a browser such as Chromium and screenshots an arbitrary webpage as a PNG file. By using it on a three.js rendering of 3d graphics, we can thus save the 3d graphics as a PNG file. This is PR https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/38509 (needs review). This is much heavier-weight technology than tachyon, but it has excellent mainstream maintenance status. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/337d1392-f7bf-4dc1-8c9a-a40cfcd59eefn%40googlegroups.com.
