Creating a Tutorial from an old Sage Worksheet (.sws)

A lot of pedagogical material has been written in the Sage Worksheet format, which is no longer supported by Sage after the transition to Python 3 and the removal of the SageNB package.

However, it is possible to convert Sage Worksheet files. Once you have created a worksheet and are satisfied with the text and computations, download it to a directory.

We will assume here that the worksheet is called Tutorial.sws and the directory is called make_tutorial. We also assume that sage is your Sage command; if it is not in your PATH then replace this with the path to your Sage installation, such as /Applications/Sage-9.2.app/Contents/Resources/sage/sage if you are using the Mac app and have placed it in your Applications directory.

• Next, you will need an optional package to covert your worksheet. Use the command:

  $ sage -i sage_sws2rst
  

  to install it (or, in the Mac app, use the Terminal Session advanced menu).

• Then we will use the sws2rst script to turn the worksheet into a document in the ReStructuredText format. Be sure you are in the same directory as the worksheet:

  $ sage --sws2rst Tutorial.sws
  

  This will create an .rst file along with a subdirectory of image files (which may be empty if there are no images).

  You can find help for sws2rst with the command sage --sws2rst -h once you have installed beautifulsoup4.

• In principle, such a file could be added directly to Sage’s documentation (see the developer’s manual). However, you probably want to check whether it looks right first. So next we will compile this file to html documentation.

  • Follow the instructions of sage --sws2rst --sphinxify. First, we will open a Sage shell session, where all appropriate Sage references already work properly:

    $ sage --sh
    

    From here, you should be able to just type:

    $ sphinx-quickstart
    

    and then respond to prompts for turning your .rst file into documentation. For most of them you can just hit enter/return to accept the defaults. However, you will probably want to

    • Enter a name for the project

    • Enter a name for you

    • Type y for the question about using MathJax

    Keep note of the instructions; the main other thing to do is add your file’s name to index.rst, and then just do:

    $ make html
    

    and wait while magic happens. To see the results, open the file make_tutorial/_build/html/Tutorial.html with a browser, or use your graphical file system to navigate to the same place.

• Now you can modify the .rst file more and repeat the steps of compiling it until it is ready for inclusion, or just for distribution among other Sage users as an HTML file. (Do make pdf for a PDF version.)