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Sage Usability Tasks

Source: Sage Usability Improvements List. This is an attempt to organize the desired changes into tasks of varying difficulty (e.g., easy, medium, hard).

1. General Must-Read

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

2. Documentation

• Allow $ for reST math - #6892.

• Document pexpect interface.

• Document notebook port forwarding.

3. Notebook: Admin

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

• Selective registration with reCAPTCHA, challenge questions, admin approval, and/or revokable custom codes.

• Custom authentication: LDAP, UNIX accounts, etc.
• Recovery passwords.
• Email address as username.
• User groups.
• Privileged users, e.g, admins.

4. Notebook: Introspection

• Use Sphinx for sagenb.org docstrings.
• Live introspection cells.
• Introspection cross-links.

• New documentation browser. Send docstrings to this browser.

• Better error detection, e.g., for Maxima command completion.

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

5. Notebook: Special modes

• Graph editor - #1321.

• LaTeX doc mode.

• reST editing.

  • TinyMCE-style editor.

  • %rest cells (auto-hide, double-click to show) sent to Sphinx on-the-fly.

6. Notebook: User Interaction

• Automatic tips for keyboard shortcuts, editing features, etc. Opt out.
• Friendly bug buddy that emails reports, bundles session history, etc.
• Easy backups of own work, with or w/o data, output, snapshots, etc.
• Toolbar with buttons to interrupt running code, save, get key help, etc.
• Easily identify idle, queued, and running cells.
• Keys: intuitive, splash-screen.
• Interactive 2D/3D plots

  • coordinates, zoom, pan, annotate

  • matplotlib, canvas, SVG, Flot, Open Flash Chart.

• Animated 2D/3D plots using only JavaScript.

• Always show long output links, regardless of interrupt or length.
• Custom window close callback.
• Suppress browser warning for Konquereor.
• Unique cookie for each login.

7. Notebook: Under the hood

• Smartly manage Jmol applet count, or memory use.

• Component architecture.

• Cythonize pexpect.
• Client-server synchronization: TinyMCE problem, fail-over servers.
• Balance server pool loads.
• Load JS / CSS components on demand.

8. Build / Tests