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Sage Usability Tasks

Source: Sage Usability Improvements List. TODO: Assign difficulties to individual tasks, if it's appropriate, or just order or group by difficulty.

1. General

• Y. Aner's notebook threat model (PDF).

• Keith Lang's Top 10 UI Myths.

• Sage Forge.

2. Documentation

• Allow $ for reST math - #6892.

• Document:

  • pexpect interface for users.

  • notebook port forwarding.

3. Development

• More convenient development workflow
  • Current workflow is:
    1. Change file
    2. Restart Sage Notebook
    3. Wash, rinse, repeat
  • Possible improvements:
    • Autoreload and autobuild mechanism (dev mode)

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Robert Bradshaw wrote:

Here's my ideal system (which rietveld may or may not be a part of,
but certainly it'd be better to not start something from scratch).

0) I hack on my own code, committing as I want, the normal mercurial
way.
(1) I run a sage command that takes all my changes and uploads them
to trac (or rietveld, or Review Board, or ...). It may or may not
flatten them. The ticket description should be no more than the
commit description (i.e. our commit descriptions should be a lot more
verbose.)
(2) This patch automatically gets applied to the current alpha, any
merge problems, build problems (including documentation), or test
failures get reported and bounced back. Linting could happen at this
point too (everything from no tabs to coverage to "Sage:" in docstrings)
(3) Upon a successful build (or even not) this build gets saved and
can be accessed and played with (via the notebook or by ssh-ing into
a virtual machine). The code can be browsed and commented on.
(4) Reviewer makes comments, as a whole or line-by-line. They can use
(3), browse the code, and have a sage command like sage -merge that
will quickly update their local copy to the state of the ticket, and
allow them to push as well.
(5) I can quickly address those comments via a sage -b into that
branch (or otherwise using queues/etc. to get back to my ticket
state), make my changes, and re-push to trac. Building and tests
happen after every push. This point here is not to be underestimated--
I think it will greatly improve the quality of the code to lower the
overhead of the feedback loop.
(6) When the reviewer is happy, he marks it as positive review.
(7) The release manager(s) approve the patch. At this point they know
it builds, passes tests, and has at least one positive review. It
goes into a queue.
(8) Patches in the queue get applied to the current alpha. This
implies a moving alpha, which one knows builds and passes all tests
on at least one system. It should be easy to upgrade to that alpha.
(9) People can (easily) donate computer time to build and test
alphas, which will greatly increase hardware coverage. Bisection can
be used to locate the offending ticket in case of failure.

4. Notebook: Admin

• Authentication:
  • LDAP.
  • UNIX accounts.
• Dashboard for server settings / status:
  • View logged-in users, load, processes, etc.
  • Backups: all critical data, selective.
  • Configure thresholds, alerts, snapshot behavior.
  • Manage user accounts, groups, privileges.
  • Restricted version for users.
• Registration:

  • reCAPTCHA.

  • Challenge questions.
  • Admin approval.
  • Revokable custom tokens.
• Users:
  • Groups.
  • Privileges.
  • Email address as username.
  • Use secure tokens to reset passwords.

5. Notebook: Introspection

• Use Sphinx for sagenb.org docstrings.

• Matrix B mentioned twice in B.solve_left?: B.solve_left(B, ...).

• Better error detection, e.g., for Maxima command completion.
• Completions link for mobiles.
• Live introspection cells.
• Introspection cross-links.
• Improve introspection / completion interface: floating div, RHS div.

• New documentation browser. Send worksheet docstrings to this browser.

6. Notebook: "Modes"

• %timeit.

• Graph editor - #1321.

• LaTeX doc mode.

• reST:

  • TinyMCE-style editor.

  • %rest cells (auto-hide, double-click to show) converted to HTML by Sphinx.

• Preparse in the browser: implicit multiplication, less work for server.

• Chat - qwebirc, Web IRC.

  • Rich content, e.g., equations.
  • Sage compute bot.
  • Add to help page.

• Python debugger a la Pylons.

• Vector graphics - #6973.

  • Draw - SVG-edit.

  • Annotate output from matplotlib's SVG backend.

• Code editor a la BeSpin

  • Command-line history.
  • Syntax highlighting.
  • Context-sensitive completion.

• Math input GUI plug-ins.

7. Notebook: User Interaction

• Help:
  • Reorganize help page.
    • Search for commands
    • linking to similar and related commands
  • Easy set up of shipped jsMath fonts.
  • Automatic tips for keyboard shortcuts, editing features, etc. Opt out.
  • Friendly bug buddy that emails reports, bundles session history, etc.
• Customization:
  • Typeset output default setting.
  • Implicit multiplication default setting.
  • Custom window close callback.
  • Function to update worksheet titlebar.
  • Easy backups of own work, with or w/o data, output, snapshots, etc.

  • Download zip files of multiple worksheets, even if accounts=True.

• Keys
  • Restart worksheet shortcut.
  • Splash-screen with common keys.
  • Insert new cell after current cell shortcut.

  • Custom shortcuts, e.g., ctrl-bksp to delete previous word, not join cells - js-hotkeys.

• Cells:
  • Auto-updating cells, e.g., interacts.
  • Prevent text movement by a pixel on cell frame focus.
  • Always show links for long output cells, regardless of length or interruption.
  • Easily identify idle, queued, and running cells.

  • Select, delete, (un)group, move multiple cells.

  • Leading space input bug - #6729.

• 2D / 3D plots:

  • JavaScript animations.

  • Mouse-over for coordinates - matplotlib.

  • Interactively zoom, pan, annotate - canvas, SVG, Flot, Open Flash Chart.

• Worksheets:
  • Slideshow mode.
  • Use notebook as IDE for running sage instance.
  • Always visible menubar at top of worksheet.
  • Toolbar with buttons to interrupt running code, save, attach files, etc.

  • Parens matching - #3646.

  • TinyMCE synchronization problem.

• Published worksheets:
  • Delete them.
  • RSS feeds.
  • Live cells, e.g, interacts.
  • Only to selected users or groups.
• Notebook:

  • Tags.

  • Suppress browser warning for Konquereor.
  • Unique cookies for logins from different browsers / computers.

  • Full-text search: SQLalchemy, Whoosh (codenode-devel).

• Fix MoinMoin.

• Externally embed live cells / worksheets. Live published workseets. #6855.

8. Notebook: Under the hood

• Better handling of concurrent worksheet use.
• Smartly manage Jmol applet count, or memory use.

• Use Python's logging facility.

• Component architecture.

• Cythonize pexpect.
• Client-server synchronization:
  • TinyMCE problem.
  • Server-to-server for backups, possibly with authentication.
• Track worksheets and user data with Mercurial.
• Balance server pool loads.
• Load JS / CSS components on demand.

• Migrate to server / framework: Django, Pylons, Pyjamas, Tornado, etc.:

  • URL routes.

9. Notebook: Development

• Auto-reloading (similar to paster serve --reload or CherryPy's AutoReload).

10. Build / Test

• VirtualBox Sage.

• andLinux Sage.
• Binary distibutions that don't use SSE3, etc.
• Sagelite for Windows.
• Windows build farm.
• Windows port.

• Notebook testing infrastructure: mechanize, Selenium, Testled, Webdriver, WebTest, Windmill.