Fwd: [sage-devel] singular help system broken.

[Kannappan Sampath]

Hello Singular-devel group: 

This is my first time posting here! I have been looking at getting the Singular help system to work for the version that is shipped with SAGE. I would be very glad if one of could help me fix the following problem, so I could write a patch for SAGE: 

As the thread I am forwarding with this email indicates, the first error message was helpful and doing what was suggested fixes it. However, the nest error is: 

> help ring;

// ** Could not get IdxFile. 

// ** Either set environment variable SINGULAR_IDX_FILE to IdxFile,

// ** or make sure that IdxFile is at /Users/apple/sage/local/doc/singular.idx

   ? cannot open `help.cnf`

// ** Displaying help in browser 'dummy'.

// ** Use 'system("--browser", <browser>);' to change browser,

// ** where <browser> can be: "dummy", "emacs".

   ? No functioning help browser available.

   ? error occurred in or before STDIN line 1: `help ring;`

> system("--browser", "emacs");

> help ring;

// ** Your help command could not be executed. Use

// ** C-h C-s Top

// ** to enter the Singular online help. For general

// ** information on Singular running under Emacs, type C-h m.

What is this dummy browser option? And, given that one of you would point me to a proper fix, is the Make file the right thing to add these commands into?

With Sincere Regards, 

Kannappan. 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: William Stein <wst...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, May 9, 2014 at 8:42 AM
Subject: Re: [sage-devel] singular help system broken.
To: sage-devel <sage-...@googlegroups.com>

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Kannappan Sampath <kntr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello group:
>
> At the moment, the help system for singular is broken:
>
>> help ring;
>
> // ** Could not get IdxFile.
>
> // ** Either set environment variable SINGULAR_IDX_FILE to IdxFile,
>
> // ** or make sure that IdxFile is at
> /Users/apple/sage/local/doc/singular.idx
>
>    ? cannot open `help.cnf`
>
> // ** Displaying help in browser 'dummy'.
>
> // ** Use 'system("--browser", <browser>);' to change browser,
>
> // ** where <browser> can be: "dummy", "emacs".
>
>    ? No functioning help browser available.
>
>    ? error occurred in or before STDIN line 1: `help ring;
>
>
> IMHO, we should arrange for this to work!

Doing

sage -sh
export SINGULAR_IDX_FILE=$SAGE_ROOT/local/share/singular/singular.idx
singular

will get past that error, to the next error, which is about needing to
set the help browser.  Neither option worked for me.

William


>
>
> With Sincere Regards,
>
> Kannappan.
>
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--
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

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[han...@mathematik.uni-kl.de]

The help system of Singular uses two filesi for configuration:
- singular.idx : index of the manual, either at
%b/../doc/singular.idx or given by the environment variable
%SINGULAR_IDX_FILE
(%b is the directory of the main binary of Singular)
- help.cnf : available help browsers, either at
%b/LIB or %b/../LIB or given by the environment variable
SINGULARPATH
Unfortunatly, help.cnf is not installed by sage.

The sources contain it at Singular/LIB/help.cnf and it should be
installed at $sage_root/local/share/singular/help.cnf
This activates the online-help of Singular (see comments in help.cnf).
Additional files are needed for offline usage: the html files from
http://www.mathematik.uni-kl.de/ftp/pub/Math/Singular/SOURCES/3-1-5/Singular-3-1-5-share.tar.gz
should go to %b/../html (i.e. $sage_root/local/html) or to a directory
given by SINGULAR_HTML_DIR.

If one want to fix a binary distribution of sage,
get
http://www.mathematik.uni-kl.de/ftp/pub/Math/Singular/SOURCES/3-1-5/Singular-3-1-5-share.tar.gz
unpack it and set:
SINGULAR_IDX_FILE to .../Singular/3-1-5/doc/singular.idx
SINGULARPATH to .../Singular/3-1-5/LIB
SINGULAR_HTML_DIR to .../Singular/3-1-5/html
SINGULAR_EMACS_DIR to .../Singular/3-1-5/emacs

Hope that helps,
Hans Schoenemann

PS: for the configuration of all files/directories in Singular
see kernel/feResource.cc

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[Oleksandr]

Dear Kannappan,

I'd like to add that the latest development version of Singular (>= 4.0.0) seriously differs to Singular 3.* in this respect... 

but you are probably still using the legacy Singular 3.*, right?

Best,

 Oleksandr

[Kannappan Sampath]

Firstly thanks to everyone who has replied on this thread. 

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 10:01 PM, Oleksandr <mot...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Kannappan,

I'd like to add that the latest development version of Singular (>= 4.0.0) seriously differs to Singular 3.* in this respect... 

but you are probably still using the legacy Singular 3.*, right?

Yes, indeed! There seems to be more serious bugs in the Sage interface to Singular! I will get in touch soon! 

--Kannappan. 

 

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