Re: libevaluator library and GSL

["Aleksandar B. Samardzic" <a dot samardzic at matf dot bg dot ac dot yu>]

On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 11:38:33AM +0100, Brian Gough wrote:
> Aleksandar B. Samardzic writes:
>  > I've written a library
>  > (http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/libevaluator/) that makes possible
>  > to parse strings representing mathematical functions over single or
>  > multiple variables and later to evaluate these functions for different
>  > variable values (also to create representation of function derivative
>  > over specified variable etc.).  I've submitted this library for
>  > evaluation regarding inclusion in GNU project and was told by my
>  > evaluator that they would rather like to see my library as part of GSL
>  > than to publish it as separate library.  My library is written in C, but
>  > offers also Fortran 77 and Gule interfaces (as well as Fortran 90
>  > interface). 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Thanks for your email.  I've had a look at your package from CVS.
> Here are my comments, which you may pass on to the GNU evaluator.
> 
> The question of having an expression parser in GSL came up once
> before.
> 
> My opinion was that a library to do this could be useful in many
> C programs, including those which do not require anything else in
> GSL.
> 
> Having a standalone evaluator package, with minimal dependencies,
> that is very easy for people to integrate into their program
> could be a good strategy for encouraging people to use the GPL
> for their software -- in the same way that the Readline library
> does.
> 
> If the evaluator is part of GSL then it reduces the effectiveness
> of this approach, because GSL is so big (probably much larger
> than the application the evaluator would be used in) and could
> not be distributed with the program very easily.
> 
> So, I would recommend having a single standalone library under
> the GPL, standardising on ANSI C expressions, and having no
> external dependencies (except for the standard c library), to
> maximise the potential userbase.


Brian,

Thank you for your effort and suggestions.  Since I guess you have best
perspective here, I'll follow your suggestion and approach my evaluator
again to re-consider having libevaluator to be separate part of GNU
project.  Anyway, whether it will become part of GNU project or not, it
is already available at mentioned location
(http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/libevaluator/) and is already under
GPL, so if anyone interested - feel free to utilize it.  I'd like also
to thank other people that responded to my message for very useful
suggestions regarding further work on this library.

Regards,
Alex