Textbook converted to Sage worksheets

[Rob Beezer]

I've converted Tom Judson's open-source Abstract Algebra textbook
(http://abstract.pugetsound.edu) from Latex to a series of Sage worksheets (one
per chapter) with almost no compromises (ie the same source also builds a
faithful PDF). Cross-worksheet links are not supported yet in the notebook, and
I've not yet started adding Sage code to the book, but adding compute cells is
possible and feasible right now. Available as the first example on the wiki
page: http://wiki.sagemath.org/devel/LatexToWorksheet

The worksheets are packaged into a single zip file, which the notebook will
upload and unpack (mostly even in the right order). There is a live compute
cell at the bottom of each chapter for experiments or annotation via Tiny MCE.
The graphics all begin life as tikz diagrams, so even these have editable source
code.

Tom has done a lot of work to modernize the source, since this book was
originally written in the late 1980's. He had to also update the Historical
Note about Fermat's Last Theorem. ;-) I'll be working over the next several
months to add in material about using Sage to study groups, rings, fields, etc.
Any extra non-obvious ideas about how to leverage Sage in the study of these
topics would be appreciated. Reports of any typos or technical problems with
the current state-of-the-art would also be appreciated.

I have a few other books in various states of conversion, some have Sage code
already. I'm also going to use Tom's book to further stress-test MathJax, which
has already resulted in two bug-fixes for the MathJax jsMath-compatibility
extension. I've had help from several people on this, notably Tom Judson,
Robert Marik, Dan Drake, Minh van Nyugen and Davide Cervone.

(I've cross-posted to sage-devel and sage-edu - sorry for the noise if you read
both.)

Rob

[Tim Daly]

Rob Beezer wrote:
> I've converted Tom Judson's open-source Abstract Algebra textbook
> (http://abstract.pugetsound.edu) from Latex to a series of Sage
> worksheets (one per chapter) with almost no compromises (ie the same
> source also builds a faithful PDF). Cross-worksheet links are not
> supported yet in the notebook, and I've not yet started adding Sage
> code to the book, but adding compute cells is possible and feasible
> right now. Available as the first example on the wiki page:
> http://wiki.sagemath.org/devel/LatexToWorksheet

Rob,

This is excellent. It would be useful if these kinds of textbooks were
available
in versions for every CAS. I'll look at what it might take to generate
an Axiom
version. Like the CATS test suites, this could give everyone a common
touchstone
for discussion and debate as well as a common reference for teaching.

>
> The worksheets are packaged into a single zip file, which the notebook
> will upload and unpack (mostly even in the right order). There is a
> live compute cell at the bottom of each chapter for experiments or
> annotation via Tiny MCE. The graphics all begin life as tikz diagrams,
> so even these have editable source code.
>
> Tom has done a lot of work to modernize the source, since this book
> was originally written in the late 1980's. He had to also update the
> Historical Note about Fermat's Last Theorem. ;-) I'll be working over
> the next several months to add in material about using Sage to study
> groups, rings, fields, etc. Any extra non-obvious ideas about how to
> leverage Sage in the study of these topics would be appreciated.
> Reports of any typos or technical problems with the current
> state-of-the-art would also be appreciated.
>
> I have a few other books in various states of conversion, some have
> Sage code already. I'm also going to use Tom's book to further
> stress-test MathJax, which has already resulted in two bug-fixes for
> the MathJax jsMath-compatibility extension. I've had help from
> several people on this, notably Tom Judson, Robert Marik, Dan Drake,
> Minh van Nyugen and Davide Cervone.

I'll contribute any examples from Axiom that have direct conversions to
Sage.

[Rob Beezer]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the reply and the interest in integrating Axiom with this.

I think it could be very easy to adapt my conversion process to have
any added code cells executed by Axiom in the Sage notebook, either
cell-by-cell or as the default language for an entire worksheet.
Creating some Axiom-specific format might be more work. 95% of the
conversion relies on tex4ht producing jsMath, which the Sage notebook
is designed around.

I now understand very well how to craft latex that converts cleanly
and am making progress on the best way to mark-up Sage code (mostly
with SageTeX environments) and have them translate into parts of
worksheets. So, while working acceptably right now, the conversion
process is far from stable - so keep in touch when you get serious
about adding Axiom to AATA.

Thanks,
Rob