[SnapPea-planning] SnapPy: preliminary version available

[Nathan Dunfield]

Dear all,

Marc and I now have a preliminary version of SnapPy, a "mixed-mode"  
command-line-within-GUI application based around our new and improved  
Python interface.   Features:

* Cross-platform: OS X, Unixes, and (once we get around to it) Windows.
* Centered around the enhanced IPython interpreter.
* Link editor.
* 3d graphics: Dirichlet domains, etc.

The Python interface, called "snappy" has the following improvements  
over the old one:

* Nearly a complete wrapping (just missing the splittings stuff).
* More consistent and convenient interface.
* Has special features, related to covers, when used within Sage.
* Actual documentation!  Lots of it!   Also, unittests.

You can get it here:

	http://math.uic.edu/~t3m/SnapPy/doc/

Note particularly the screeshots and the installation instructions.

Installing for OS X is trivial.  Installing for Linux is still a bit  
of a pain --- you have to build from source.  I would be interested to  
know whether anyone here can get it to build under Linux (we've do so  
on Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 and Fedora 8, but it wasn't always  
straightforward).

Send us any comments, ideas, etc.

	Best,

	Nathan