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What advantages do Tcl/Tk offer while using sage?

asked 13 years ago

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I am planning to install sage in Ubuntu 10.04. I need to know if installation of Tcl/Tk is absolutely necessary or is optional for use of sage. (The associated FAQ does not clearly state that.) I have not used python earlier so I am confused. The reason I am interested in installing sage is that I will often need to solve differential equations numerically and save the output plot in ps/eps/pdf format so that I can use this in latex input file. I may need to get help with other jobs like evaluating complicated integrations etc. So should I install Tcl/Tk or can I skip it?

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I don't have an answer for you, but your use case suggests that you might find SageTeX useful - http://www.sagemath.org/doc/installation/sagetex.html, among other places.

kcrisman gravatar imagekcrisman ( 13 years ago )

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answered 13 years ago

Emil Widmann gravatar image

updated 13 years ago

I can think of 2 situations where you could need TCL/TK. First is with R. if you download additional packages from CRAN servers, then TCL/TK provides a GUI Window to select the mirror. However there should be a fallback (text) mode - so this is not crucial.

The second possibility is if you want to use MATPLOTLIB directly from the python packages (scipy, numpy). TCL/TL is one possible "graphic backend". However in that case Sage needs to be compiled with compiler option MATPLOTLIBGUI=yes.

So bottom line: Probably you won't need TCL/TK and won't even notice if you don't have it.

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answered 11 years ago

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On the other hand, if you want to use R packages, there are a few that depend on tcl/tk themselves (not just the download gui). Ggplot2 comes to mind. Whether you will be able to use the tcl/tk interfaces within these libraries is moot, but they definitely won't compile/install without them.

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Asked: 13 years ago

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Last updated: Dec 26 '13