On Aug 23, 5:03 pm, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > On 08/23/10 09:52 PM, rjf wrote: > > > > > On Aug 23, 1:25 am, John Cremona<john.crem...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> However, I suggest that for many users who are not pure > >> mathematicians, having a different (or alternative?) name for the > >> parameter "ring" might be helpful. > > >> John > > > Maybe they shouldn't be using Sage if they don't know the term > > "ring", > > as well as the meaning of RR. > > > RJF > > If Sage wants to be a viable alternative to the 4 M's, then it needs to be > able > to be usable by people who are not mathematicians. Despite having engineering > degrees I had never come across the term ring (in the mathematical sense), > before getting involved in Sage.
In the end, what is really going on here is that some very hard- working individuals got a huge amount of basic functionality implemented in a way where you don't need to know what a ring is, but in ways that left lots of more user-intensive cases looking more complicated than it wants to be. This just means much less hard- working individuals (like me) eventually need to make this part of the interface better. But I think this *will* eventually happen. A lot of it will get better when enough people understand Maxima well enough to make the use of its flags etc. much better, which unfortunately has been on hiatus for me for a while (as I remarked to Barton Willis off-list earlier in one of these discussions). But it *will* happen. - kcrisman -- 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 URL: http://www.sagemath.org
