Re: GMP + Octave Interpreter

[Tomer Altman]

Hey Paul,

Some points:

* Thanks; I just wanted to get a sense of what state GMP functionality
  was in.

* I guess I'm thinking very ambitiously about arbitrary precision
  calculations, and their potential. I'm sure there are many
  situations where someone would love to eek out more precision than
  what their hardware provides. For example, is it possible to have an
  entire matrix of 128-bit floating-point numbers, and perform matrix
  manipulations/calculations on them, just as with other data types?

* I guess that I think that GMP is mature enough to add to the main
  Octave package separately, even if it was originally added for GiNaC
  support. It would be very useful for Number Theory, Cryptography,
  Symbolic calculations, and any situation where the user should be
  able to demand greater precision, even at the cost of performance
  penalty.

* In general, is there a well-defined process by which mature parts of
  OctaveForge are merged into the main Octave package? How does it
  work? Also, does anyone have an idea of what percentage of Octave
  users also download OctaveForge ( as gleaned from the ratio of
  downloads of the two projects ) ?

Thank you!

~Tomer


On Oct 31, 2003 at 9:25pm, address@hidden wrote:

pkienz >Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 21:25:24 +0000
pkienz >From: address@hidden
pkienz >To: address@hidden, address@hidden
pkienz >Subject: Re: GMP + Octave Interpreter
pkienz >
pkienz >The symbolic toolkit wraps the gmp stuff in a new octave type.  You
pkienz >can use variable precision numbers without any reference to the
pkienz >symbolic bits of the package.  
pkienz >
pkienz >I don't know that you could do better by wrapping it directly, but if
pkienz >there is some gmp functionality missing from the symbolic toolkit
pkienz >that you need, could you please direct your efforts to adding 
pkienz >there?
pkienz >
pkienz >Thanks,
pkienz >
pkienz >Paul Kienzle
pkienz >address@hidden
pkienz >
pkienz >On 30 Oct 2003 at 14:53, address@hidden wrote:
pkienz >
pkienz >> Hello,
pkienz >> 
pkienz >> Are there plans to move the GNU Multiple Precision (GMP) library into
pkienz >> the main Octave sources? It's currently only present in OctaveForge,
pkienz >> and is used just for the symbolic "toolkit". But I can imagine that a
pkienz >> direct interface to the library would be very useful.
pkienz >> 
pkienz >> If it isn't already in the works, I'd gladly volunteer to
pkienz >> mkoctfile-it. :-)
pkienz >> 
pkienz >> Cheers,
pkienz >> 
pkienz >> ~Tomer
pkienz >> 
pkienz >> 
pkienz >> 
pkienz >> -------------------------------------------------------------
pkienz >> Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.
pkienz >> 
pkienz >> Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
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pkienz >> -------------------------------------------------------------
pkienz >> 
pkienz >
pkienz >
pkienz >



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Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
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