[SnapPea-planning] priorities

[Nathan Dunfield]

> 	3. make the graphics routines work within Sage notebooks.
> I'm not sure about the relative priority of these.  In particular, it
> seems to me like (1) would be substantially easier than (3), and also
> that it would provide a better user experience, but of course it would
> only be useful for people who use the Mac.

Dear All,

I played with Sage's graphics capabilities and found that basic 2d and  
3d stuff works fine.  The examples at http://wiki.sagemath.org/ 
interact give an example of the possibilities.

Starting with Marc's PyOpenGL code for viewing Dirichlet domains, I  
was easily able to show Dirichlet domains in the Klein model.  When I  
tried the Poincare model, both as Jeff's SnapPeaX and SnapPy do, it  
worked, but not as well as either of the former.   This is not  
surprising, as Sage's 3d graphics comes from the the Java-based Jmol,  
rather than OpenGL.  (Sage also has a built-in ray-tracer which  
produces pretty, but static, pictures).   It's also quite possible  
that I'm not doing things in the optimal way, but in any event the  
Poincare model is the just the visual icing on the cake.

This is certainly an instance where a picture is worth N >> 0 words,  
so see

http://sagenb.org/home/pub/513/

for the results.   You should be able to rotate the Dirichlet domains  
about, regardless of whether you have Sage installed.  You can use the  
scroll wheel of your mouse to zoom in and out.  Near as I can tell,  
you can't make them spin in the canonical SnapPea way.

The things are unclear to me are:

1) If clicking on the 3d image can be reported and tied to a  
particular face/edge/vertex
2) How one would write a link editor.

I will make some inquiries on this.

	Best,

	Nathan