On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 12:30 PM, Simon King <simon.k...@nuigalway.ie> wrote: > Dear Robert, > > On 27 Jul., 19:55, Robert Bradshaw <rober...@math.washington.edu> > wrote: >> This is actually very related to >> >> http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/c97d36... > > So, the fact that RingElement uses the category framework means that > both the code *and* the documentation are hidden behind layers of > abstraction, to the extent that they can actually not be accessed *at > all*, unless one untars the spkg? That's pretty nasty and, I might > add, anti-pedagogical.
Well, if one is online then http://hg.sagemath.org and the reference manual is sometimes handier, though I agree a poor substitute for inline introspection. > Is there no workaround? Say, defining the "method" (or slot method > wrapper envelop whatever) and explicitly assign an attribute __doc__ > to it? The point is that spkg-check of my cohomology package relies on > the availability of documentation. Note that this is only an issue for special methods--other methods (from Cython, the category stuff, etc.) will be just fine. While I would like to be able to introspect functions such as __pow__, I don't think it's always the best place to put documentation (only power users will know to check there) and not worth significant performance penalties for all arithmetic. I'm optimistic there will be a way to have our cake and eat it too, but there isn't right now. - Robert -- To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org
