Rewriting introductory thematic tutorial on coding theory

[sagetrac-dlucas]

With all the recent work done on the coding theory library in Sage, the existing thematic tutorial on CT should be updated.

This tutorial has (imho) some problems:

• it is more a catalog of available methods and constructions rather than an actual tutorial
• it goes very fast into very specific methods and details, which should not be mentioned here

This ticket proposes a complete rework of this tutorial, which, instead of listing methods and constructions, gives some clues on how to build generic linear codes and perform standard operations (encoding, decoding, adding errors in words) for people working on coding theory.
It also explains to the user how to find any method and construction he needs.
Furthermore, it keeps things simple and never goes into technical details, or advanced scientific notions, preferring in that case to redirect the interested reader to manual pages instead.

CC: @tscrim

Component: coding theory

Author: David Lucas

Branch: 12bf512

Reviewer: Julian Rueth

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/19897

[sagetrac-dlucas]

Branch: u/dlucas/introductory_thematic_tutorial

[sagetrac-dlucas]

Commit: 2057fee

[sagetrac-dlucas]

comment:2

I pushed my work, this is now open for review.

As a note for the reviewer/interested reader:

• I had to add a flag .. nodoctest at the beginning of the file, in order to not having to recreate a new object (code, channel) at the beginning of each code block. If one knows of to transfer created objects from one block to another (if possible), it would of course be better!

• New decoders New decoders for Generalized Reed-Solomon codes #19653 will introduce have interesting properties wrt their message space. I made this ticket a dependency of New decoders for Generalized Reed-Solomon codes #19653 and created a new paragraph related to decoders and message spaces in New decoders for Generalized Reed-Solomon codes #19653.

[sagetrac-dlucas]

Author: David Lucas

[jdemeyer]

comment:3

Replying to @sagetrac-dlucas:

If one knows of to transfer created objects from one block to another (if possible), it would of course be better!

See link and linkall

http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/developer/coding_basics.html#testing-rest-documentation

[sagetrac-git]

Branch pushed to git repo; I updated commit sha1. New commits:

d9bcb28	Update to 7.1beta0
70e5211	Added ..linkall keyword and wrote a new paragraph on decoders and introspections

[sagetrac-git]

Changed commit from 2057fee to 70e5211

[sagetrac-dlucas]

comment:5

Thank you!

I put .. linkall at the beginning of the file.
I also updated a bit this tutorial by adding a new paragraph on decoders and introspection.
Reopening this for review.

David

[sagetrac-git]

Changed commit from 70e5211 to 4035292

[sagetrac-git]

Branch pushed to git repo; I updated commit sha1. New commits:

4035292

Moved and fixed list of decoder types

[sagetrac-dlucas]

comment:7

I moved the list of decoder types from the thematic tutorial to the doctstring of decoder_type.
I also fixed errors in it, and did a better formatting.
This is still open for review.

[saraedum]

comment:8

Looks very good to me. Some minor issues.

• Typo in Lets us now go a bit more into details on specific points.
• The algorithms behind decoder work differently for each decoder: sounds strange. Did you mean Decoder or decoders?
• to compare decoders which work the same. Did you mean something like decoders which share properties?
• In Section II, we briefly introduced the new Channel objects as a new way to put errors in a word.. I think you should remove both occurences of new. Channels are maybe new right now but they won't be anymore at some point.
• We also introduced a useful shortcut for. Was that "introduced" in the document? Did you mean "have"?

Have you checked that this looks alright in the pdf output? I think you might have to escape ... somehow or maybe you can just use a unicode …. Same goes for the dashes you use; maybe they are alright but you might want to double check.

Other than that, feel free to set this to "positive review" once you adressed the above.

[sagetrac-git]

Branch pushed to git repo; I updated commit sha1. New commits:

b443718	Update to 7.1beta1
61d49cc	Rewrote some sentences and fixed typos

[sagetrac-git]

Changed commit from 4035292 to 61d49cc

[sagetrac-dlucas]

comment:11

Hello,

Thank you for your comments!

I fixed every issue you noticed.
I checked the pdf output, and it looks just fine.

Before setting this ticket to positive review, can you please add you name to the list of reviewers?
I'm changing it to needs_review again in the meanwhile.

David

[sagetrac-git]

Changed commit from 61d49cc to 12bf512

[sagetrac-git]

Branch pushed to git repo; I updated commit sha1. New commits:

12bf512

Removed table of types

[sagetrac-dlucas]

comment:13

Hello again,

I finally removed the table of decoder types, as this types are actually a bit more tricky to define than I thought...
I'll open a new ticket dedicated to these types and their definition.

David

[saraedum]

Reviewer: Julian Rüth

[vbraun]

Changed branch from u/dlucas/introductory_thematic_tutorial to 12bf512

[jdemeyer]

Changed reviewer from Julian Rüth to Julian Rueth

[jdemeyer]

Changed commit from 12bf512 to none

[saraedum]

comment:17

jdemeyer: Out of curiosity. Someone told me that it's fine to put umlauts and such things now. Is there a reason why I should use not use "ü"? So I know how to do this in the future…

[jdemeyer]

comment:18

Replying to @saraedum:

Is there a reason why I should use not use "ü"?

The only reason is that you're known as "Julian Rueth" now, so it's for consistency.

[jdemeyer]

comment:19

If you like to change to "Rüth", that's not a problem for me. But at least try to use "Rüth" consistently then.