On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 8:37 AM, John H Palmieri <jhpalmier...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > On Aug 21, 8:17 am, Craig Citro <craigci...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Perhaps a function "get_help()" (or "help()") could print a link to > > > sage-support, could print the needed technical data, *and* could print > > > a brief introduction on how to post a good request (i.e., odds are > > > that we understand what the user means): > > > > I much prefer something along these lines to any extra information in > > the banner. Maybe even just call it something like "system_summary" > > and suggest people include that info in any requests to sage-support. > > Two things: right now, "help()" starts up the Python help system, > which might be a little disconcerting to unsuspecting users. So it > might be a good idea for "help()" to do something else. Is there a > way to access the Sage documentation (other than introspection) from > the command line? Second, maybe we could change the banner to say > something like > > Type notebook() for the GUI, system_info() for ..., and license() > for licensing information. > > We want to keep it short, but I wouldn't object to listing one more > command. How important is it to include the "license" command in the > banner, as long as it's prominently available elsewhere? Of some relevance is that according to the GPL howto http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html#howto "If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: <program> Copyright (C) <year> <name of author> This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it" under certain conditions; type `show c' for details." Sage has a relatively short banner now probably because the other Ma's all have very short banners. PARI has a long and mostly useful banner. GAP has a big useless banner (it's mainly just GAP in big pseudoletters). Here is the PARI banner, which again is both long and actually quite useful: ------------------------------ (%i1) flat:sage wstein$ sage -gp GP/PARI CALCULATOR Version 2.3.3 (released) i386 running darwin (x86-64/GMP kernel) 64-bit version compiled: Aug 19 2009, gcc-4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5493) (readline not compiled in, extended help available) Copyright (C) 2000-2006 The PARI Group PARI/GP is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY WHATSOEVER. Type ? for help, \q to quit. Type ?12 for how to get moral (and possibly technical) support. parisize = 8000000, primelimit = 500000 ------------------------------ I personally so far generally like having a short banner... But I'm happy David brought up this question and I hope it gets a good discussion. William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
