Here's my opinion. It is really nice to have PDL as a distribution. With better
documentation a lot of the dependencies would be better highlighted and be able
to be understood.
I have seen the emails on perlbrew, alien and local::lib - but I have no idea
what they are.
When it comes to people who use bits and pieces of perl to get there work done
and are not perl experts, PDL is becoming more useful. I have been able to get
two other people in my group to install it and start playing with it. I am
going to guess that when it comes to commercial applications, unless the person
performing the analysis already has a good background in perl, they will not
know anything about its culture, or its mechanisms. In our extended group there
are probably ~40 people that use perl, all of us use ActiveState and several
use cygwin, because they have installers that work and when they need a new
package it is easy for them to find. About 25% of them even know what CPAN is
never mind knowing how to use it or cpanm.
So from my point of view, having an installable package that provides 2d and 3d
interactive graphics is great. I find myself using it more than R or SciLab
now. Although there are still things that I find easier to do in both of those
applications as well, and work will always be like that. One application will
be better for sometype of analysis than another. Right now I think that PDL is
becoming a very good application - more than a perl distribution and much more
than a bunch of loosely connected perl packages - that don't always work nor
are properly supported. Recently one of the packages that I used for date-time
I notices was providing inconsistent results. I then found that the person no
longer supports the package. Once a distribution becomes fractured, you will
run in to these types of issues as well as the integration quality.
I completely agree Quality Assurance is number 1. Documentation is part of
Quality Assurance of a product. Possibly an architecture of plugins is what you
would like to see around a PDL core. The definition of the core though will be
key. Matlab, Scilab, have somewhat defined a core that would include 2d and 3d
interactive graphics, and then pluggable modules for specialized analysis -
such as signal processing, thermodynamics, etc. R on the other hand, almost
everything is a module, and it drives me crazy sometimes to get what I want out
of it.
My 2 cents.
CLIFF SOBCHUK
Core RF Engineering
Phone 613-667-1974 ecn: 8109-71974
mobile 403-819-9233
yahoo: sobchuk
www.ericsson.com
"The author works for Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson ("Ericsson"), who is
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-----Original Message-----
From: chm [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2012 8:14 PM
To: David Mertens
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Perldl] Let us Kvetch! (was: PDL book checking)
On 1/22/2012 9:45 PM, David Mertens wrote:
> To all -
>
> I've changed the original subject. I hope this doesn't bother anybody
> too much.
Subject change is ok, but you dropped the thread so users don't see the earlier
part of this discussion to which this appears to be a response.
The first:
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: PDL book checking
> Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:18:32 -0500
> From: chm <[email protected]>
> To: Matthew Kenworthy <[email protected]>
> CC: [email protected] <[email protected]>
>
> On 1/22/2012 3:57 PM, Matthew Kenworthy wrote:
>>>
>>> I forgot to point out that =ff is just what is needed to put page
>>> breaks at the start of each chapter...
>>>
>>>
>> Ah! Good to know :)
>>
>>> I'm confused. Yes, the plan was to have a PDL::Book distribution,
>>> which, by definition, would include the PDL::Book.
>>>
>>>
>> I thought the ultimate idea was to put PDL::Book into the PDL-2.4.10
>> tarball, but the discussion about the sizes of the included images
>> nixed that idea. YOu can revive the diea by having PDL::Book only
>> have text and image generating scripts. I think that your point is to
>> keep PDL::Book a separate distribution entirely, which is where our
>> confusion comes in.
>
> OK. There seems to be an enormous amount of interest in "putting" the
> PDL Book into the PDL distribution.
>
> While it _seems_ simple to just add it into the current "kitchen sink"
> PDL has, the reality is that if PDL were split into a core
> distribution and a number of other, separate, distributions
> corresponding to the external dependencies, we would be *much* better
> off:
>
> (1) The core would already be 100% ported since
> it is mostly the external libraries and programs
> that are difficult to get working consistently
> across all platforms.
>
> For example, a win32 PDL still takes
> significant guru expertise to do. I *still*
> can't do it. Although, if I took the time,
> I could follow Rob's instructions and build
> it eventually...
>
> We work around that through Rob's generosity
> to build and make available up-to-date PPD
> versions of PDL CPAN releases, including the
> latest developers release.
>
> (2) Code improvement in PDL modules could happen
> faster without having to wait for the entire
> PDL distribution. By releasing frequent git
> snapshots as developers releases, I've been
> able to reduce some of the impact of this.
>
> However, the developers releases are even
> farther from 1-click installs then the CPAN
> official releases.
>
> (3) The full on, kitchen sink version of PDL
> could still be bundled up and distributed
> as a single distribution rather than the
> possibly dicey use of cpan or cpanm to
> build all the dependencies correctly.
>
> (4) For similar reasons, having the PDL-Book-0.0.1
> distribution works better: more frequent or
> needed updates can be made as required, issues
> of format generation and image generation will
> continue to be worked out, a book isn't the
> same thing as on-line help or documentation
> (although they could be viewed with the same
> utilities),...
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
>
>> And, I should add, at this point, this is a Good Idea.
>>
>> The issue of generating the figures occurred to
>>> me when I saw that the full size image looked fine but that the
>>> scaled html image had lines that were too thin and hard to see. It
>>> would be better to have a separate NxN for HTML and 800x800 for PDF
>>> output.
>>>
>>>
>> Hmm, I think that good displayable single source images are possible
>> with
>> HardLW=>5 and HardCH=>2 for illustrations. But that's something for
>> the release after this upcoming one!
>>
>> Matt
And the second, additional points:
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Perldl] PDL book checking
> Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:10:11 +0100
> From: Henning Glawe <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
>
> On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 04:18:32PM -0500, chm wrote:
>> While it _seems_ simple to just add it into the current "kitchen
>> sink" PDL has, the reality is that if PDL were split into a core
>> distribution and a number of other, separate, distributions
>> corresponding to the external dependencies, we would be *much* better
>> off:
>>
>> (1) The core would already be 100% ported since [ ... ]
>> (4) For similar reasons, having the PDL-Book-0.0.1
>
> With my Debian Developer's hat on (those points mainly refer to the
> 'bleeding edge' of debian development, i.e.
> testing/unstable):
>
> (5) a problem with a single dependency would not kick all of pdl
> and all packages it depends on from our testing branch,
> which has happened recently due to portability problems with plplot.
> (6) Less problems with SONAME transitions, as only the relevant
> interface module packages would need to be updated.
> (7) Easier/more reliable way to automatically create package
> dependency lists (each interface module depends on the
> corresponding library packages). As mentioned recently on this
> list, the dependency list of debian's pdl package is a bit
> long; I have to do the splitting into depends, suggests
> and recommends manually, that's maybe why a bit too much
> slipped through... this would be a lot easier if we had
> a 'core' with minimal external dependencies and interface
> distributions.
>
> --
> c u
> henning
And this reply (in context):
> This is a well-worn discussion. The last time this was thoroughly
> discussed was on the porters list: see the porters' archives starting
> from October 31, 2009, and running into November. These are from the
> days when I spent a lot of effort stirring the pot, and a bit less at
> actually writing code.
> [Note: November 2009 has one of the largest collection messages in the
> archives, and my pot stirring has been bested by no less than the
> great Daniel Carrera, whose ability to stir a pot (and get docs and
> code written) still impresses me.] I have since repented my lack of
> code writing and I've tried hard to focus more on writing code and
> less on stirring pots. If you don't believe me, just wait for
> PDL::Graphics::Prima. :-)
>
> Back in late 2009 when we last discussed this, nearly everybody was in
> favor of splitting PDL into multiple pieces. Judd Taylor voiced a
> dissenting opinion, stating that PDL needs to have a large collection
> of numerical capabilities built-in so that it appeals to new folks. If
> people have to install lots of modules to get what they want, they'll
> just walk away. He also claimed that the lack of an install-everywhere
> 2D plotting library was a big issue. Read his email and others'
> responses to get a fuller picture:
> http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/pipermail//pdl-porters/2009-November/00
> 1617.html
>
> These days, I stand by my original statement, that PDL would be best
> served split into many smaller pieces. BioPerl underwent a similar
> transitions a few years ago, and many major frameworks (Test comes to
> mind) were built like this from the ground up, providing a simple core
> upon which others can build. We are a Perl technology, and I believe
> we would do well to embrace the current trend in Perl modules to
> provide simpler distributions that target specific goals.
>
> I see two issues:
>
> 1) Quality Assurance. Whenever somebody makes a change to the core,
> they run the *whole* test suite. If we split the core, changes made in
> one component will not be easily tested against other components.
> Solutions include (1) CPAN testers, which should be able to pick out
> bad interactions within a few days to a week, and (2) a continuous
> integration server specifically for PDL. For the latter, jitterbug, a
> Perl-based continuous integration system comes to mind. It would be
> amazing, it would take time to set up, and it would cost $$ to host
> the server unless somebody out there has a box sitting idle on a
> static IP. (Lately I have been thinking about purchasing a $7/month
> VPS for this very idea, and for hosting the IRC
> bot.)
>
> 2) Knowing where to find things. If we split things up, we must have
> documentation about where to find information about different PDL
> capabilities. This is all the more important if users are installing
> PDL, and need to know what to install. Installation itself is becoming
> much easier with local::lib, perlbrew, and the Alien packages (shout
> out to Joel for his recent work on Alien::Base). The current docs are
> not very tied together and may not give the user and idea of where (in
> monolithic PDL) where to look, but they do have an Index document that
> knows about all the installed modules. The solution to this is simple,
> but hard: write better docs that make thorough references to what's out there.
>
> I believe that the benefits greatly outweigh the costs, but the
> greatest missing piece is commitment by PDL porters and users to make it
> happen.
> Back then, I began working on Module::Build::PDL, but I lost steam
> when I was told that M::B::PDL would have to build the entire PDL
> distribution. I have since figured out that what I had accomplished
> with M::B::PDL can be as easily achieved using Module::Build with well
> crafted .pm.PL files. My opinion is now this: if we can't achieve our
> split of PDL into pieces that M::B can handle, then the pieces are still too
> big.
>
> So, here's what I say: let us kvetch! We will move forward with 2.4.10
> and the close follow-up of 2.4.11, but everybody should lay out their
> thoughts about splitting up PDL (or not). After the dust has settled,
> as 2.4.11 is taking form, those us of who are truly interested can
> re-read the discussion and decide how to move forward. In particular,
> I would *love* to send out another survey, this time asking about what
> people want and *how many hours people are willing to commit to make
> it happen.*
>
> David
>
>
>
>
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