Sage Usability Improvements

This unofficial wish list is adapted from this repository. Please feel free to add or clarify ideas, link to trac tickets, make comments, reorganize items, point out useful links, etc.

Documentation

• latex doc mode

• back tick versus $ suggestion is to patch Sphinx itself

• fix sagenb.org so docstrings look right (sphinx)
• ReST mode(s):
  • (1) replace tinymce by ReST editor? (2) %rest in cells, and get rest output.

• document pexpect users

Notebook

Admin

• add a textcha question for sage notebook signup
• LDAP authentication. (tdumont)
• ensure no matter what that worksheet and server are 'nsync

• reduce data loss possibilites -- see dataloss.txt

• "I am running sage in one of our department servers, so that my students can use them. If my students lose their password, how can I recover it for them? Thanks." (Byungchul Cha)
• make it so username is email address -- i really like that
• add users as admin -- see sage-support email to fprimex

Users

• reorganize the notebook help page
• automatically have worksheets save their state and restore when started later.
• ability to update the titlebar from sage notebook
• ability for interacts to auto-update themselves
• Whoosh fulltext search (search in codenode archives for discussion)

• Keith Lang "Top 10 UX Myths"; http://carsonified.com/blog/design/top-10-ux-myths/

• chat system for students/users
• implement %timeit block in notebook

• tags (Brian Granger)

• 1 week -- write something to make it easy to embed interacts in other web pages
• There are things that I now don't like on the Sage notebook, like that if I click on a cell, the frame gets focused (that's ok), but the text moves by one pixel. I hate that. My javascript version doesn't do that, at least on firefox. In fact, it's just a CSS styles issue, so it's easy to fix -- but I wasn't sure if it's just on my firefox, or oeverywhere. (ONDREJ)
• iphone -- link to do completions

• notebook input bug -- http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/6729

• debugger in the notebook
• Somebody published a irrelevant worksheet (to test the button) and wanted to cancel it but he was not able. He then delete its worksheet, but apparently the worksheet was still published...:(
• make it possible to delete published worksheets.
• slideshow mode
• in-browser zoom-pan-annotate of Sage plots

• What I mean is that the chance to access at the same time an history powered command line, and a powerful editor (with code completion, tabs, colors, etc.., which looks pretty standard - to not say minimal - in these modern times) looks pretty comfortable to me, but I'll be happy to listen to other comments. I've already heard talking about BeSpin ( https://bespin.mozilla.com/ ) in this list, right? Can't we have something similar?

• fix moinmoin

Build / Test

• Implement a cross-browser web-application testing infrastructure based on webdriver http://code.google.com/p/webdriver/ for the notebook, focused on functionality, consistency and concurrency. For example, execute 10 sessions of virtual calculus students in a loop. tags: google <- for funding? notebook java stresstest Money? Don't know, motivated student who has learned webdesign, java and probably python.

• http://testled.com/

• make it so sage binaries don't use ssse3, etc. -- make them FAT!
• windows server farm
• 1 week -- write code to do automated testing of the scalability of the Sage (or any) notebook system
• 1 week -- get the current notebook separated out from Sage 100% for real and get it to work on windows. (this is sagelite).
• 1 month -- the windows port

• 2 days -- VirtualBox Sage

• 2 days -- andLinux Sage
• 1 month -- fix the major bugs and issues with the current notebook that make it difficult to deploy (e.g., account management).
• 1 week -- improve documentation/testing and refactor code.