Re: New recruit!

[Pascal Dupuis]

The original mptoolbox author released a previous version on
sourceforge. I briefly looked at it.

Most of the code consist of an object-oriented layer above mex-files
calling gnu MPL directly. But in the process there are
re-implementations of f.i. matrix inversion and svd.

Without Linear Algebra Support, I agree that the package belongs to
Octave-Forge. Now if it starts re-implementing Linear Algebra
algorithms, there are risks of divergence between the algorithms from
BLAS and the new ones; there is need for maintenance of two trees, and
so on. This is why I feel less comfortable with a package in
octave-forge.

There is an MPACK package implementing Linear Algebra in higher
resolution Fortran, but there was no commit since the end of last
year. Maybe the high resolution support should be integrated in the
Fortran libs by their main contributors in the first place ?

Regards

Pascal

2013/6/25 c. <address@hidden>:
>
> On 24 Jun 2013, at 18:32, Pascal Dupuis <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> Hello Richard,
>>
>> A place where I find Octave could be better is about high-precision
>> arithmetic. Currently, a matrix is considered as badly scaled if its
>> condition number is smaller than 10^16; with some kind of simulations
>> this is a limiting factor.
>>
>> There are a number of higher precision libs: Gnu MPL, ARPREC, MPACK, ...
>>
>> Supporting higher precision means
>> 1) choosing some lib
>> 2) integrating it smoothly inside Octave
>> 3) make either a new octave type, either a new octave class available
>> in order to support it
>> 4) imagine how to bind this new type with the octave core functions,
>> in particular the fortran libs
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Pascal
>
> Pascal,
>
> I don't think it would make sense to integrate this into core Octave but it 
> does seem a
> great plan for an Octave-Forge package.
> And it could be a nice project for a Summer of Code student, in case we get 
> accepted by SoCIS [1].
> Would you mind adding this idea in the project ideas page of the wiki listing 
> yourself as a possible mentor?
>
> Thanks,
> c.
>
>
> [1] http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2013/
> [2] http://wiki.octave.org/Summer_of_Code_Project_Ideas
>
>