Difference between revisions of "Site:This project"

Latest revision as of 18:08, 20 March 2016

Isn't it a good idea to have such a local discussion club, similarly to this and this? Boris (talk) 17:51, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

I try and keep a log of different projects. For the last week I've been orbiting the oldest pages and marking them as dire/needing-references/poor-quality, so forth, it is predominantly just me or someone I'm often emailing or talking to so there hasn't been a point. Alec (talk) 18:31, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

By the way, about pictures: here they are implemented as on Wikipedia, I guess. A much better implementation is on EoM; there I had the joy making this and that and more pictures. Boris (talk) 21:51, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I had noticed they had an asymptote module installed. I'm looking into this. I think it's really important that when one zooms detail isn't lost (so the content looks sharp even on high resolution displays) and I'm looking into options. I've written an SVG plotting library and I plan to merge it with this, to use it for graphs and diagrams. I don't want to re-invent the wheel. That second link (the knot) looks amazing though.

If you look at this (see file on right)

- it is really bad (screen capture of graphic calculator), however Geogebra isn't bad. I cannot find some examples I did but it offered some VERY nice export features. I'll keep an eye on this. Thanks Alec (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I've looked at asymptote, it requires libMesa and some other stuff. This can go three ways:

1. I do nothing - I let people upload images they've made with Asymptote and ask them to provide source on the file page.
2. I manage to get Asymptote working through PHP by writing an add-on. I really don't want to do this, I hate PHP and getting it to play nicely with other processes is difficult. It'd also be very heavy on the server.
3. I use LibSR to do 3d rendering (my software renderer) however it doesn't anti-alias and is far from production quality, it'd also be heavy on the server's CPU.

I will keep investigating this. I didn't know about Asymptote, so thank you for that Alec (talk) 00:29, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Regretfully, I do not know how it works. But you could try to ask Ulf Rehmann, he is the man that did it. Boris (talk) 05:46, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Some remakrs here. Boris (talk) 06:32, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

As for me, the quality of the pictures is only one of three merits of Asy on a wiki. Here are the other two.

Usually, images on a wiki are non-wiki objects. That is, one cannot modify them wiki-wiki. A formula can be modified by anyone who knows latex; and even if he does not, a simple modification may be guessed how to do, and latex will be learned gradually. In contrast, a picture is an external object; one can replace it, but cannot make a small modification quickly. With Asy implemented, a picture can be modified by anyone who knows Asy; and even if he does not, a simple modification may be guessed how to do, and Asy will be learned gradually.

Usually, a picture on a wiki has its own copyright status. With Asy implemented, a picture is just a part of the wikitext created gradually by the community; it has no author and no special copyright. Boris (talk) 06:44, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

About "heavy on the server": being rendered once, the image is cached and no more rendered (until someone modifies the asy text, of course), if at all cache is working on the wiki installation. On EoM it is.

About 3d: well, this is a luxury; 2d would be very nice. Boris (talk) 06:50, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Quick note about caching. It doesn't matter if someone is using show-preview a lot. I don't know about you but my editing pattern involves a lot of previews. I've been reading about Asymptote and some of the things involving implicit surfaces and curves would be both memory and CPU intensive. Of course these could be limited but I wouldn't want to provide a low limit. I do however have a less heavy alternative in mind that might be good in the meanwhile. But providing a different tool isn't real ideal (Asymptote works, is known and is mature oh and is OS) Alec (talk) 16:11, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

I see. Indeed, if many editors will preview many pages full of implicit surfaces... but I guess, when it will happen (if ever), that time your wiki will reside on a powerful server, being supported by a large community. Boris (talk) 18:08, 20 March 2016 (UTC)