Re: [OctDev] complex error function

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 21 November 2012 12:50, Thomas Weber <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 11:11:58AM -0500, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
>> On 21 November 2012 10:56, Steven G. Johnson <address@hidden> wrote:
>> > On 11/20/12 4:33 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I'm still not sure what to do with this code... It sounds useful,
>> >> sure, but you didn't write it for Octave except for a small wrapper.
>> >
>> >
>> > Not sure why that matters?  Most of the math and linear algebra functions 
>> > in
>> > Octave were not written "for Octave".
>>
>> It matters from a maintainership and code ownership perspective. If
>> you're just making a library, why not actually just create such a
>> library and you go through the hassle of making releases instead of us
>> gluing your code into Octave? I sure don't want to have to keep two
>> different copies of the same code in different codebases each with its
>> own diverging set of bugs. Then we can maintain the Octave-specific
>> wrapper ourselves and you can keep maintaining your library.
>
> Are you guys seriously considering the creation of a library for 3-4
> functions? How many libraries would we have if BLAS was built in that
> way?
> Get the code included into one of the existing code bases (maybe [1])
> or implement erfc for libc. Less work for everybody.
>
> [1] 
> http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_52_0/libs/math/doc/sf_and_dist/html/math_toolkit/special/sf_erf/error_function.html

It's actually closer to 8 functions now, I think? We use ARPACK for
just a couple of Octave functions, eigs and svds, and we have similar
situations for urlib and urlwrite.

But, sure, I thought of what you said after I wrote my email. I agree,
get this into an existing library most of us are already using or
could easily use, instead of directly including it in Scipy, R,
Octave, Scilab, and who knows who else, may be better.

- Jordi G. H.