[GiNaC-devel] AsyForGiNaC - an output extension producing Asymptote files

[Sheplyakov Alexei]

Hello,

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 01:20:58PM +0100, Vladimir Kisil wrote:
> >>>>> "SA" == Sheplyakov Alexei <varg at theor.jinr.ru> writes:
>     SA> Secondly, drawing is sensible only for small subset of GiNaC
>     SA> classes ... a complex-valued function?.... 
> 
> 	Yes, complex-valued functions are drawable.
Well, such a plot (complex-valued function of a complex variable) would
be 4-dimensional. I agree that it is possible to draw it, but IMHO there
is no point in doing such things. Thus, I think that plotting functions
should not be virtual methods of GiNaC::basic.

>     SA> I use GiNaC 1.3.5, Asymptote 1.03, g++ 4.1.2
> 
> 	INSTALL recommends Asymptote 1.11
Could you please mention in the INSTALL file that earlier versions are
known to *not* work?

>	Generally, a couple of recent discussions in this list are derived
> from the more general question:
> 
>   Is GiNaC a tool for a broad community or it is narrowed to special
>   needs/circumstances? 

DISCALIMER: the follwing is simply my personal opinion, see
cs.SC/0004015 and hep/ph-0510057

\begin{quote}
First of all, GiNaC's name must be read literally.
\end{quote}
(GiNaC's manual)

I think GiNaC is special-purpose library. One of the goals of GiNaC is
efficient handling of quite a large expressions (an sum of ~10^6 terms
is not really a big expression). Thus, GiNaC provides only basic 
functionality, since one can't probably do any funky things with such
expressions anyway. I don't know if GiNaC's approach is useful for 
something except calculations in perturbative quantum field theory
(and frankly, I don't care much).

Best regards,
 Alexei.

-- 
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

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