Documentation points to mathics.net which is hopelessly out-of-date

[TobiSchluter]

Per @wolfv 's request, I'm spining this off #754

The most visible site running mathics is http://www.mathics.net. It is hopelessly out-of-date.

The canonical site seems to be https://mathics.angusgriffith.com/. This site has broken certificates and a hard-to-remember domain name. Moreover, if you open the documentation on it, you are pointed to the "bad" site, see the screenshot below.

I think there are a number of issues which I vaguely sort in terms of ease-of-addressing (note that I write 'should', but please don't take that as more than a way of expressing potential aciton items, I'm definitely not trying to tell anybody what they should do):

• the documentation should not point to mathics.net
• certificates of angusgrifftih.com should be fixed
• a beginner-friendly domain name should be found (actually mathics.org appears available)
• somebody should volunteer to host mathics using that domain (someone very nice :) )
• mathics.net should be reclaimed for the project

It would be important to make sure that there is an easy way for potential users to not run into an old version of mathics when they first try it, because simple bugs (such as my #754 ) are sure to turn potential users away quickly from this very good piece of software.

[wolfv]

As mentioned elsewhere, I've set up Mathics in Binder: https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/wolfv/Mathics/binder?urlpath=proxy%2F1234%2F

I think that's the preferred way to deliver up-to-date mathics for the future. Maybe we can figure out how to point existing docs there.

[slel]

The angusgriffith.com certificates have been renewed (thanks @sn6uv for that) but it would be nice if maintainership of the mathics.org and mathics.net domain names and hosting could be handed over to the new maintainer, and if the mathics pages on angusgriffith.com could be made to redirect or at least point to maintained pages.

The following pages have Mathics or IMathics links that are outdated or otherwise non-working ("403 forbidden", "This site can’t be reached"...).

• [ ] the page for the "mathics" tag on Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/tags/mathics/info
• [ ] the "list of kernels" page on the Jupyter wiki: https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/Jupyter-kernels

[slel]

See also https://github.com/mathics/Mathics/issues/768#issuecomment-490428934.

[mmatera]

About Jupyter support, if some pull request from my are accepted, mathics could partially work with iwolfram. In (Southamerican) summer, I plan to continue improving it.

Dr. Juan Mauricio Matera

CONICET IFLP - Dto. de Física UNLP, Casilla de Correos 67 Calle 49 y 115 s/n, 1900 La Plata, Argentina Tel +54 221 4246062 (int 294) Fax +54 221 4236335 e-Mail: matera@fisica.unlp.edu.ar homepage: http://www.fisica.unlp.edu.ar/Members/matera Skype: mauricio5831

El lun., 3 jun. 2019 a las 20:19, Samuel Lelièvre (notifications@github.com) escribió:

The angusgriffith.com certificates have been renewed (thanks @sn6uv https://github.com/sn6uv for that) but it would be nice if maintainership of the mathics.org and mathics.net domain names and hosting could be handed over to the new maintainer, and if the mathics pages on angusgriffith.com could be made to redirect or at least point to maintained pages.

The following pages have Mathics or IMathics links that are outdated or otherwise non-working ("403 forbidden", "This site can’t be reached"...).

• the page for the "mathics" tag on Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/tags/mathics/info
• the "list of kernels" page on the Jupyter wiki: https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/Jupyter-kernels

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[wolfv]

Hi @mmatera I merged one of your PR's yesterday. Please point me to others you need to have merged.

[rocky]

@GarkGarcia I think this should be in milestone 1.1 - any release should have accurate documentation for that release.

Also fixing this seems pretty straightforward.

[GarkGarcia]

I'm not sure how to deal with this, since the is no website running a recent version of Mathics currently online. I think you have to simply remove the link.

[rocky]

Is this about having recent docuemntation online? That is what I took the title to mean.

After the docs build, then just copy them over to https://github.com/mathics/mathics.github.io/tree/master/docs

It will then appear in as http://mathics.github.io/docs/mathics-1.1-dev.pdf

(Right now there is http://mathics.github.io/docs/mathics-0.9-dev.pdf and http://mathics.github.io/docs/mathics-1.0.pdf)

At any rate that's what I took this issue to mean. However if there's more to it let me know.

[slel]

Related to this issue:

• Could @poeschko transfer ownership of the mathics.org and mathics.net domain names to current Mathics maintainers? Or at least make them redirect to http://mathics.github.io?

• Could @sn6uv make mathics.angusgriffith.com redirect to http://mathics.github.io?

[GarkGarcia]

Is this about having recent docuemntation online? That is what I took the title to mean.

No, I don't think so. In my understand, this is about links in our documentation that points to mathics.net and mathics.org, which were using outdated versions of Mathics (this websites aren't even up anymore).

• Could @poeschko transfer ownership of the mathics.org and mathics.net domain names to current Mathics maintainers? Or at least make them redirect to http://mathics.github.io?

That would be great too. However, we'd still need to host the website somewhere. No sure how we'd pay for that, or if anyone would be welling to maintain it.

[rocky]

That would be great too. However, we'd still need to host the website somewhere. No sure how we'd pay for that, or if anyone would be welling to maintain it.

Set up github sponsors. And ask cloud providors like DigitalOcean or some up-and-coming hosting service if they are interested.

For now, though we should remove that option.

[GarkGarcia]

And ask cloud providors like DigitalOcean or some up-and-coming hosting service if they are interested.

I was thinking about that too. We could try to setup a sponsored instance of Mathics of sorts: a websites that let's people use Mathics on the web and is payed by a company, the company in turn is allowed to place adds in the site. Something similar to https://haveibeenpwned.com/. I'll investigate this in the future.

Set up github sponsors.

One issue with that is "who will handle the money?". I'm not sure we could trust anyone with that. That could work if we could somehow make sure that the funds are only spent on hosting bills, but I don't know how to do that.

[rocky]

As mentioned elsewhere, I've set up Mathics in Binder: https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/wolfv/Mathics/binderurlpath=proxy%2F1234%2F

@wolfv Would there be an advantange to setting this up the for this github?

@GarkGarcia Now that I understand this better, I think this should not be addressed before the 1.1 release. This will probably be too difficult to do in the short term.

I thought this was simply about updating the PDF and HTML/XML based docs, and that has been done. Hooking Django showing sections of this I think can be done simply as well and should be for 1.1

Here's why after 1.1 makes sense. With everything else more or less stable, the packagers who want to package this for distro can do that. @mmatera has said he would work on a Jupyter interface (specifically iwolfram) in a couple of months maybe. Having a solid release to work off of for him and others who want to do similar sorts of things is good.

[mmatera]

Binder would be a good option after we have a stable jupyter interface. I could work more in iwolfram maintenance on my holidays during January. Any progress we get in improving the basic support on the text interface of mathics will make my dutty easier...

[rocky]

Any progress we get in improving the basic support on the text interface of mathics will make my dutty easier...

What exactly does this mean? Be as specific as you can. Thanks.

[mmatera]

My minimal wish-list would be

• Make the starting time of mathics as fast as possible.
• Improve as much as possible the performance.
• Fix pymathics in order to load modules for things like "manipulate".
• Give support to export graphics in png format.

[rocky]

Is this for 1.1 or 1.2?

• Make the starting time of mathics as fast as possible.
• Improve as much as possible the performance.

This is vague and we don't really know what's possible. How do you know when the goal is achieved? How long is this going to take?

Why would this be useful for 1.1 as opposed to 1.2? Is the speed right now currently worse than 1.0?

Note that if 1.1 is released, 1.2 could come shortly after 1.1. So if this is about 1.1, what is it about this that makes it important for 1.1 given that there is already a huge amount of stuff that most do not have access to unless they install from source, and OS packagers aren't likely to install.

There are specific PR's to address specific items like the #633 and #619 and those seem easy to address.

• Give support to export graphics in png format.

Unless this is easily doable, I suspect in the release after 1.1 this will be addressed by virtue of offloading the work to mathplot via sympy or something else.

[mmatera]

• the speed is a little bit worse now than in the previous version, just because we have increased the site of the defintions database. In that sense, we have already a couple of PRs, including those that you mention, that seems to help a lot on this aspect.

• About graphics, as you say, I think that using other libraries would be the easier way.

I guess now that what you want is a list of PRs to fix and incorporate in 1.1 and 1.2 instead of general goals. I could examinate what is now available a make that list during the next days.

[rocky]

Thanks for the clarification.

I could examinate what is now available a make that list during the next days.

I think that would help. @GarkGarcia ?

With respect to 1.1 and 1.2 I am just trying to make concrete what right now seems nebulous so we could organize things and get a sense of where we are. For me, my understanding of what's possible and what is involved has changed in understanding the code better.

My own personal view is that releasing early and often is great. Releasing broken code though is worse than doing nothing. It is subjective as to when something is "broken" as opposed to to be implemented later.

As examples, not having a manual (when there was one) in my opinion is not acceptable. But not having a hosted cloud-based way to run is okay since that's largely broken anyway. So although that is a regression, in a sense it is an okay one.

[GarkGarcia]

@GarkGarcia Now that I understand this better, I think this should not be addressed before the 1.1 release. This will probably be too difficult to do in the short term.

I agree. I didn't plan to contact any companies before the 1.1 release. However, I plan to remove the references to mathics.net and mathics.org from the documentation. We could re-add the links later if we ever get the sites up-and-running again.

[GarkGarcia]

I think that would help. @GarkGarcia ?

I agree, that would help a lot.

On that note, I think we should avoid working on functionality that isn't listed in the 1.1 milestone. While adding functionality is generally something we need to do in the long term (lots of things aren't implemented yet), we need to get the issues of the 1.1 milestone addressed until the start of november. Adding more stuff is likely to introduce bugs, so I'd like to avoid that as much as possible for the moment.

My understanding is that not all of us agree on what should be addressed before the 1.1 release. @rocky @mmatera I think we should try to arrange a meeting (remotely, of course) for us to come up with a list of issues that should be addressed before 1.1, what do you guys think about that? Anyway, my point is: let's make a list of things that should be fixed before 1.1 and after that let's commit on fixing those issues and those issues alone.

[poeschko]

I'm happy to point mathics.net and mathics.org somewhere else, just let me know where.

[mmatera]

My understanding is that not all of us agree on what should be addressed before the 1.1 release. @rocky @mmatera I think we should try to arrange a meeting (remotely, of course) for us to come up with a list of issues that should be addressed before 1.1, what do you guys think about that? Anyway, my point is: let's make a list of things that should be fixed before 1.1 and after that let's commit on fixing those issues and those issues alone.

It would be nice. Just in case, I am in Argentina. Where are you? (that is needed to coordinate taking into account the time zone). then we could arrange a meet at https://meet.jit.si/Mathics1.1milestone (for example)

[rocky]

NYC

[mmatera]

@GarkGarcia @rocky, (and anyone else that want to join us) can we set the meeting for tomorrow, let's say 10.00 am (Argentina/GTM-3) / 09.00 am (NYC/GTM-4) at https://meet.jit.si/Mathics1.1milestone?

[rocky]

During the workday week is not possible for me. Pick sometime on the weekend. Thanks.

[mmatera]

Next Saturday, same bat-time, same bat-channel, then?

[slel]

I'm happy to point mathics.net and mathics.org somewhere else, just let me know where.

Thanks @poeschko for offering to do that!

From what I understand, mathics dot org was the project homepage while mathics dot net was a "try Mathics online" website.

The last archived version of both that I could find are:

• mathics dot org archived on 2018-06-28
• mathics dot net archived on 2016-06-01

For now, in my opinion, what would make the most sense is to point both to the current Mathics website:

• http://mathics.github.io

since it can be edited by the current maintainers via the repository at

• https://github.com/mathics/mathics.github.io/

and it will be easy to add a link there on how to use Mathics online.

[slel]

Regarding the "try Mathics online" aspect, two things could help:

• 915: make Mathics Binder ready and add a Binder button

• 916 : make Mathics work on CoCalc and reopen https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc/issues/417

With any (or ideally both) of these, anyone could easily use Mathics online.

[rocky]

With any (or ideally both) of these, anyone could easily use Mathics online.

Yes, but not anyone can make it visable via https://github.com/mathics/mathics.github.io/ We're waiting on that.

Independent of that, currently master is intermittently broken with the Django 2.x upgrade, so we'd need to do something about that or be careful with the version Binder or CoCalc picks up. (We are also waiting for master not to be intermittently broken. See #905)

[GarkGarcia]

It would be nice. Just in case, I am in Argentina. Where are you? (that is needed to coordinate taking into account the time zone). then we could arrange a meet at https://meet.jit.si/Mathics1.1milestone (for example)

Sorry for the delay, I've been very busy lately 😅️

I'm in Brazil (UTC -3), which I think is the same timezone as yours and @rocky's (according to this random website: https://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/).

[GarkGarcia]

Next Saturday, same bat-time, same bat-channel, then?

That works fine to me!

[GarkGarcia]

For now, in my opinion, what would make the most sense is to point both to the current Mathics website

I'm inclined to that indeed. I'll try to work on it this week.

[rocky]

@GarkGarcia - We missed you in the meeting this morning.

One of the upshots of where things stand now is that because neither of us has access to commit either to this repository or the matihics.github.io repository, and access to both of these are needed as a process thing going forward and for release, we have created a new organization Mathics3.org . (The 3 is for Python3). You have been invited to that organization.

If there are others who would like to join the organization let us know and we'll add you.

[rocky]

Here are my notes on what we discussed earlier:

What is needed for next release:

• Django 2.x
• Docs (just a pass over the existing documentation, not online evautation)
• The usual PyPI packaging stuff.
• Access to things that make a release happen (see http://github.com/Mathics3):

I don't think better formatting is needed. It needs to be rethought.

I would like to see small stuff in:

• SansSerif #908
• Poke1024's #633 (Faster startup) ROCKY
• Poke1024's #580 (cache for do_format) mmatera
• Poke1024's #619 Fix quadratic runtimes in Mathics (mmatera branch)

Also discussed

• pymathics module incomleteness problems
• Import@ vs `<< "https://..."

[GarkGarcia]

@GarkGarcia - We missed you in the meeting this morning.

One of the upshots of where things stand now is that because neither of us has access to commit either to this repository or the matihics.github.io repository, and access to both of these are needed as a process thing going forward and for release, we have created a new organization Mathics3.org . (The 3 is for Python3). You have been invited to that organization.

If there are others who would like to join the organization let us know and we'll add you.

I'm sorry for not coming today. I'd be happy to arrange another meeting if you guys are available some other time this weekend. I'm available today.

One of the upshots of where things stand now is that because neither of us has access to commit either to this repository or the matihics.github.io repository, and access to both of these are needed as a process thing going forward and for release, we have created a new organization Mathics3.org . (The 3 is for Python3). You have been invited to that organization.

Yeah, this is a real problem indeed. @wolfv and @poeschko are members of the Mathics organization, I think they have the authority to invite us to becomes members too. I think creating another organization isn't the most ideal path, but I understand why you guys felt the need for doing so. I'd like to keep our efforts focused in this repository, but this project can't go forward if the people maintaining it don't have the authority necessary to release the code. As such, I'll accept the invitation to be a part of this new organization, but I'd prefer if the organizations eventually got merged.

[GarkGarcia]

• Django 2.x

This is the most relevant issue to me at the moment. @mmatera @rocky Do any of you have experience with Django? As you know, I tried updating to Django 2.2 a while ago and it didn't work out.

[GarkGarcia]

I don't think better formatting is needed. It needs to be rethought.

I agree, this is much more complex than what I originally thought. I'll remove it from the milestone.

[suhr]

If there are others who would like to join the organization let us know and we'll add you.

I would like to.

[GarkGarcia]

• SansSerif #908
• Poke1024's #633 (Faster startup) ROCKY
• Poke1024's #580 (cache for do_format) mmatera
• Poke1024's #619 Fix quadratic runtimes in Mathics (mmatera branch)

I didn't merge this PRs because I was trying to avoid introducing bugs, but sure, I can merge them.

[mmatera]

Yeah, this is a real problem indeed. @wolfv and @poeschko are members of the Mathics organization, I think they have the authority to invite us to becomes members too. I think creating another organization isn't the most ideal path, but I understand why you guys felt the need for doing so. I'd like to keep our efforts focused in this repository, but this project can't go forward if the people maintaining it don't have the authority necessary to release the code. As such, I'll accept the invitation to be a part of this new organization, but I'd prefer if the organizations eventually got merged.

@GarkGarcia, the idea is -at least by now- to have a common space to work together in PRs without breaking the main project. If once the project is ready for release, we do not have an answer from the owners of this project, we could analyze to publish the release from there.

[rocky]

If there are others who would like to join the organization let us know and we'll add you.

I would like to.

@suhr You should have an invitation now.

[suhr]

Yeah, thanks.

[mmatera]

I'm sorry for not coming today. I'd be happy to arrange another meeting if you guys are available some other time this weekend. I'm available today.

I will be a little bit busy the rest of the weekend, but if you want to talk a little bit, I could be available for another short meeting.

[rocky]

Yeah, this is a real problem indeed. @wolfv and @poeschko are members of the Mathics organization, I think they have the authority to invite us to becomes members too. I think creating another organization isn't the most ideal path, but I understand why you guys felt the need for doing so. I'd like to keep our efforts focused in this repository, but this project can't go forward if the people maintaining it don't have the authority necessary to release the code. As such, I'll accept the invitation to be a part of this new organization, but I'd prefer if the organizations eventually got merged.

@GarkGarcia, the idea is -at least by now- to have a common space to work together in PRs without breaking the main project. If once the project is ready for release, we do not have an answer from the owners of this project, we could analyze to publish the release from there.

And as for day-to-day work - I would prefer making PR's reviews and commits in Mathics3, since we now all have equal access.

It is possible to issue PRs from there back into Mathics. Whether we do that or how often it is done or whether the project owners even want that, it is undecided and up for discussion. (Silence will be taken to mean go with the other organization.)

[rocky]

• Django 2.x

This is the most relevant issue to me at the moment. @mmatera @rocky Do any of you have experience with Django? As you know, I tried updating to Django 2.2 a while ago and it didn't work out.

I don't have experience with Django 2.2 or else I would have helped and it is why I posted something to the Django google group.

However if this isn't solved by the time other things are ready and is holding us back, I'll dive into this. I have worked with other web frameworks, so how diffucult could this be?

[mmatera]

OK, I agree that we want Django 2.2 working before 1.1 release, but let face it when at least the mathics kernel works well. Then, the problems with the graphic interface would not be originated from problems with the kernel.

[rocky]

I'm sorry for not coming today. I'd be happy to arrange another meeting if you guys are available some other time this weekend. I'm available today.

' I can't this weekend, but we can plan on another one next weekend. Suggest a time.

[GarkGarcia]

I'm sorry for not coming today. I'd be happy to arrange another meeting if you guys are available some other time this weekend. I'm available today.

' I can't this weekend, but we can plan on another one next weekend. Suggest a time.

What about next Saturday at 5 pm in the UTC-3 timezone?

[GarkGarcia]

OK, I agree that we want Django 2.2 working before 1.1 release, but let face it when at least the mathics kernel works well. Then, the problems with the graphic interface would not be originated from problems with the kernel.

What would you like to get working before tackling the Django issue? In my opinion fixing graphics is something that will take a lot of time and that can't be properly addressed before november.