Hi all,
<br>
(sorry if you get the message for twice - there were some problems occured)<br><br>I'm glad to inform you about new packages - FuncDesigner and 
DerApproximator. They have been extracted from OpenOpt into standalone 
Python modules.
<br>
<br>FuncDesigner is a convenient tool for building functions and getting 
their derivatives via Automatic differentiation 
(<a target="_blank" href="../go/?http%3A%2F%2Fen%2Ewikipedia%2Eorg%2Fwiki%2FAutomatic_differentiation">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_differentiation</a>), not to be 
confused with numerical&nbsp; differentiation via finite-differences derivatives approximation and symbolic differentiation 
provided by Maxima, SymPy etc.
<br>So, you can optimize models coded in FuncDesigner by OpenOpt w/o 
providing user-supplied derivatives.
<br>For more details see <a target="_blank" href="../go/?http%3A%2F%2Fopenopt%2Eorg%2FFuncDesigner">http://openopt.org/FuncDesigner</a>
<br>
<br>DerApproximator is a small yet important package for getting/checking 
derivatives (currently only 1st ones), extracted from OpenOpt framework 
to be standalone Python module. It is required by FuncDesigner (for 
obtaining derivatives of oofuns beyond standard set without routines to 
yield them directly) and some OpenOpt solvers (when there are some 
functions without user-supplied derivatives).
<br>See <a target="_blank" href="../go/?http%3A%2F%2Fopenopt%2Eorg%2FDerApproximator">http://openopt.org/DerApproximator</a> for more details.
<br>
<br>For more info about these RCs read
<br><a target="_blank" href="../go/?http%3A%2F%2Fforum%2Eopenopt%2Eorg%2Fviewtopic%2Ephp%3Fid%3D131">http://forum.openopt.org/viewtopic.php?id=131</a><br>
<br>Regards, D.