Waldek,
I'm terribly sorry provoking the necessity of your exposition. The
infelicity of the expression " I wonder anyway why it's not yet included"
is obvious (by hindsight). Nevertheless, your statements are clear and
comprehensible. Nobody wants trash code included.
Concerning GnuDraw: I'm having endorsed Fricas to a lot of people of which
there are several cygwin users (mostly -nosman). The prize for endorsement
a software is you will be asked for this and that, and especially plotting
is a popular topic (a heritage of wxMaxima). To be short, I find GDRAW
useful and do not know of any other (reliable) way to get some graphics
(not HQ, I agree) for 'nosman's. It dates from 2008 as the header indicates
and it's by no means a 'hack'. Of course, whether to include it in the
distribution or not is debatable becuase it does not contribute to Fricas'
core business: 'math'. I also would take much more pleasure in having
included a package like 'quantifier elimination' let's say. OTOH there are
users who want to plot, wish nice frontends, perfect documentation and
whatsoever. It would be a pity to say "use this or that M*, it has the
feature", would'nt it?
Back to the point: why not including such kind of modules in the 'contrib'
folder under 'experimental, quarantine' or whatever so that users can
compile and load it themselves? At least it would be there when needed.
Kurt
On Sunday, 14 September 2014 03:32:58 UTC+2, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
>
> kfp wrote:
> >
> > On Saturday, 13 September 2014 06:24:21 UTC+2, Bill Page wrote:
> > >
> > > Kurt,
> > >
> > > Thanks for the example output. I am glad that it works and maybe it is
> > > still an argument to include gnuDraw in the next release even if we do
> > > not extend the TeXmacs interface to use it easily.
> > >
> >
> > *By all means*. I wonder anyway why it's not yet included.
> >
>
> Let me explain what I include in FriCAS. First, we
> need to have appropriate licence for included code.
> If author request inclusion, than it is resonable
> to assume the he/she automaticaly gives the licence.
> If we have code that is BSD licenced on the net,
> then we can use it. But otherwise we have a problem.
> In particular, we can not use code if there is no
> licence.
>
> Next, there must be some need. Sometime I see that
> code is doing something interesting, sometimes
> sombody writes that code is worth inculding.
> But if there is no info I can easily overlook something.
> Releated problem is description. Surprisingly it
> is rare to get concise, accurate and undenstandable
> description what code is doing. Too frequently there
> is no description at all. Sometimes there is stated
> goal, but no explanation what actually is accomplished
> ("xyz will streamline your software developement" --
> what this actually means?). Sometimes there are
> only examples with no descrition, sometimes
> description without examples. Anyway I would like
> to know what code is doing and that somebody actually
> needs this.
>
> Next, I need to know what should be included. It is
> less trivial than it may sould because code may
> appear in different places: as an attachemt in the list,
> on the wiki, as a tarball, in somebodys git repo.
> In many cases there are multiple versions and I need
> to know which one should be included. Even I there
> is a single version I need to know that this version
> should be included and I am not overlooking something.
>
> I normally try code before inclusion. For this I need
> to get runnable code. If code modifies existing files
> than diff is most convenient for me (I need to estimate
> impact on existing code and diff is easyest way to do
> this). If code is entirely new than say bunch of .spad
> files or a tarball are fine. For trying it is good
> to have some examples. In general there is good to
> have some instruction. Let me add that normally I
> have a slow link. So pictures are generaly undesirable,
> I routinely ignore videos. "Rich" websites are a burden
> as they need extra effort. ATM git is a burden for me:
> on my main machine I accidentaly deleted my old git
> installation and I hit problem installing new version.
> So currently I need to pull repo to server and than
> transfer files to my developement machine. I want
> to evantually resolve problem with git, but just now
> I prefer to spent time on FriCAS and not on git.
>
> Also, I read at least part of code to get some confidence
> that it is correct, readable and can be modified if
> needed.
>
> When there are problem with code than some fixes are
> in place. If I am including code "mined" on the net
> I normally do needed adjustment myself. OTOH if the
> author request inclusion I write about things I consider
> problematic and expect the author to resolve them
> (fix or explain me that they are not a problem).
> If author tells me the he/she does not know, how
> to solve a problem I may do this myself. If
> author does not respond problems may lead to (possibly
> quite long) delay.
>
> Now, coming to gnuDraw. IIUC it uses gnuplot to produce
> graphs. I have used gnuplot in the past and I must admit
> that for me FriCAS produced graphs looks nicer and were
> easier to use. There are several years till last time
> when I used gnuplot so it may improved. And I just
> needed specific capabilities and did not look at other.
> But given that before inclusion I want to have string
> support from others that it is needed. IIRC after
> first proposal for using gnuplot there was not much
> support. Later few persons requested inclusion
> so there seem to be enough support, but one request
> lacked other info (up to now it was even not clear
> what is requested). And even today I do not see
> really clear proposal...
>
> --
> Waldek Hebisch
> [email protected] <javascript:>
>
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