[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Naming Conventions And Practical Experience

[Konrad HINSEN]

   The Problem is mostly that all of these packages use their own matrix format

Of course; in C it is not at all obvious how to represent a matrix...

   which is not that efficient.  FORTRAN routines are somehow uniform in style
   for matrix stuff, but I would prefer a new clean module
   taking the code from there, not just interfacing it.

But that means not profiting from the enormous work others have put
into existing libraries. I'd much prefer using an existing library
which has been tested on many machines and is constantly kept up to
date with new machines, new compilers etc. We are much too small a
group to do that ourselves, even we were determined to try.

   How to do a clean exception handling whitout knowing what a procedure does.
   Sometimes you just get crashes, which are unacceptable, I want an exception
   (not FORTRAN or other style coding.)

I don't see that as a problem. LAPACK, for example, returns an error
code indicating what is going wrong. This can be converted into an
exception by the interface. Of course libraries that print error
messages or even crash on an error should be avoided.

The more I think about it, the more I tend to favour LAPACK. It has
the advantage of being available in a C version as well as in Fortran,
so those who could gain from it (like me ;-) could use the Fortran
version, and yet everyone could use the module without needing a
Fortran compiler. And, of course, it is a very reliable and complete
library.

   >Why not an Image SIG, targeted for graphics, publishing, GIS and
   >good ole "scientific image processing" users...

   I suggest to do that later, at the moment I would like to see
   us writing code for the matrixmodule in one group. When we have some

I agree!

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Konrad Hinsen                     | E-Mail: hinsenk@ere.umontreal.ca
Departement de chimie             | Tel.: +1-514-343-6111 ext. 3953
Universite de Montreal            | Fax:  +1-514-343-7586
C.P. 6128, succ. Centre-Ville     | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/Nederlands/
Montreal (QC) H3C 3J7             | Francais (phase experimentale)
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