Re: GNU Octave has been accepted as a GSoC 2016 mentor organization

[John Swensen]

> On Mar 1, 2016, at 2:27 PM, Juan Pablo Carbajal <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 10:44 PM, John Swensen <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mar 1, 2016, at 6:35 AM, Juan Pablo Carbajal <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 3:04 PM, John Swensen <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> On Feb 29, 2016, at 12:37 PM, Nir Krakauer <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Please let me know if you're interested in helping evaluate applications 
>>>> and
>>>> then mentor any accepted students.
>>>> 
>>>> Student applications will be due March 14-25, see
>>>> https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com
>>>> 
>>>> —Nir
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> I haven’t been involved in Octave development a ton lately, but would like
>>>> to get more involved now that I am past the grad student/postdoc days and
>>>> got a faculty job. I have recently done some work with a couple of 
>>>> different
>>>> polygon libraries and think that implementing many of the polygon functions
>>>> (e.g. polybool, poly2ccw, poly2cw, poly2fv, polyjoin, polysplit, etc.) and
>>>> would be something I could mentor.
>>>> 
>>>> It looks like there is a partial implementation as MEX function (though not
>>>> in Octave package format) at
>>>> https://sites.google.com/site/ulfgri/numerical/polybool that uses both
>>>> ClipperLib and GPC. I think GPC
>>>> (http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/gpc/#Licensing) is out of the question
>>>> because of their "free for private/hobbyist/education and non-free for
>>>> products/commercial" licensing. ClipperLib
>>>> (http://www.angusj.com/delphi/clipper.php) used the Boost Software License.
>>>> The Boost::Geometry (https://github.com/boostorg/geometry) and
>>>> Boost::Polygon
>>>> (http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_60_0/libs/polygon/doc/index.htm) libraries
>>>> could also be used and are license-friendly.
>>>> 
>>>> Unfortunately, based on my evaluation of all three of these, GPC is by far
>>>> the most robust solution that can handle self intersections and nearly
>>>> parallel lines very, very well, but is likely not license-compatible with
>>>> Octave. ClipperLib is the easiest to use and Boost::Geometry is the most
>>>> powerful (but a bit confusing because of how much templating is going on).
>>>> 
>>>> Let me know if this sounds interesting and you want to add me to the list 
>>>> of
>>>> potential mentors.
>>>> 
>>>> John S.
>>>> 
>>> John S.
>>> It sounds like a good project. do you think it is possible to put it
>>> as an improvement of the package geometry? There are some of the
>>> functions already there, but as m-files, maybe we can .oct some of
>>> those.
>>> 
>>> Also Philip Nienhuis had some ideas about the clipping library that I
>>> haven't had time to test.
>> 
>> It definitely could be incorporated into the geometry package, as that seems 
>> the most logical place to put it. However, I think we should have the 
>> student aiming for the Matlab-compatible functions of polybool, ispolycw, 
>> poly2ccw, poly2cw, poly2fv, polyjoin, and polysplit. These could either be 
>> implemented used the various polygon function already existent in the 
>> Geometry package, or could use one of the existing polygon libraries with an 
>> amenable license.
>> 
>> John S.
>> 
>> 
>> 
> Ok, I understand, these functions are already in matlab so the place
> to put them is definitely in core in the package geometry there. No
> need to mix it with the forge package geometry.


Who can grant me Wiki access so I can add it to the GSoC suggested projects 
page?

John S.