Michael Abshoff wrote in the comments to trac ticket #4653:
> one issue that might be worth considering now before merging is
> "name space pollution", i.e. there was some discussion at SD 11
> that it would be better to have most of the functionality of certain
> packages like quadratic forms not in the global namespace.
> I am not sure what the situation with words is (sorry, no time to
> apply the patch and play :)), but it would be nice if most of the
> functionality would be in
>
> words.$FOO
>
> Sooner or later things will start colliding in the global namespace,
> so the time to fix this would be pre-merge :)
I like this idea for several reasons, but it is something that needs
to be discussed since there should be a consistent way to do this
across all Sage packages/libraries. So let's discuss it. What is the
best way to do this? (I wasn't at Sage Days 11, so I don't know what
was decided.)
One thing that comes to mind, from a user's perspective, is that there
should be a consistent way to load all functions from a given package
into the global name space. Something like:
LoadPackage(words)
or
from words import *
I prefer the latter, actually.
Another related issue, perhaps this should be a different thread, is
pre-defined examples of objects. I am going to use graphs to
illustrate what I mean here. One can write, for example,
sage: graphs.CompleteGraph(5)
Complete graph: Graph on 3 vertices
But there are other objects lying around in the global name space
which should probably be access by such interface. And this should
also be consistent across Sage. Is graphs a suitable name for this?
Should it be something like GraphExamples or GraphConstructor or
something else instead? One problem with the name graphs is that some
sage-combinat developer is going to come along and define the
combinatorial class of all graphs and name it Graphs. Then graphs and
Graphs might have different behaviour unless one allows something like
this:
sage: Graphs(3)
Graphs on 3 vertices
sage: Graphs.CompleteGraph(5)
Complete graph: Graph on 3 vertices
Thoughts/comments?
Franco
--
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
