Decoders and types for linear codes

[dlucas]

Decoders objects in coding theory are associated with a list of types, which are a list of keywords describing to the user the specificites of the underlying decoding algorithm.

For now, the types are not listed nor defined anywhere.

This ticket proposes to create a proper list of types and their definitions.

[karandesai-96]

Could you please mention the files you intend to point out in the sage directory tree ?

[dlucas]

Hello,

I intend to create a list of types and their definitions in decoder.py (sage.coding.decoder), under the generic method decoder_type.

Actually, I originally did that in #19897, but after a discussion in #19623, we found that defining precisely types for decoders wasn't such an easy thing, hence this ticket.

David

[danielaugot]

Hi,

I do not clearly understand what is asked for.

Is a type something like "always_succes", "unique", "list" and so on ? I would then rather call that a property, since it is not a sage type.

Should that be done with a codes.decoders.decoder_types() call, which lists all decoder "types" , with an extremely clear docstring when querying with codes.decoders.decoder_types? ?

Daniel

[ralfaro]

I put my comments in the Issue #151 that Johan pointed out to me. It gives a suggestion on redefining the decoder types.

[dlucas]

I pushed a table which contains a list of decoder types and their definitions. Open for review.

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New commits:

​37e738f

Table for decoder types

[jsrn]

I made some improvements:

• Some reformulations.
• Used simpler table format for future modifications.
• The doc was not present on Decoder instances (which is where most users will see them). I wrote introspection code which propagates the doc of decoder_type to _instance_decoder_type to fix this.

If you're OK, let's get this thing in the air!

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New commits:

​70e6052	Reformulated some elements. Simpler table format
​6e9c1dc	Don't duplicate doc-string in decoder_type and _instance_decoder_type

[dlucas]

I'm OK, setting to positive review.

David