Re: [guppi-list] use of GSL in guppi

[Dirk Luetjens <dirk luedi oche de>]

Hello,

Iīm working in the field of digital image processing and Iīm using the
Khoros system right now. Since there was a mail on the gnome-list
about "Gnome Scientific Programms" I canīt stop thinking of replacing
Khoros with some GTK+/Gnome/CORBA based system. The fact, that Khoros
isnīt free anymore intensified my thoughts. 

A few discussions with another gnomer convinced me not to restrict myself
only to the field of digital image processing. I followed this list
and the development of guppi the last days, and I thought that this
the right place to discuss although related topics and perhaps to the
start a project with the goal of a new "GNU scientifc programm". 
GTK+/Gnome/ORBit and GSL are some wonderful building blocks for this. 

I know there exist a lot of scientific related software, so why create a
new one? Because I think we can make it better if we integrate 

1.) powerful CORBA services to allow all other libraries and
    applications be used from within "_GNU Science_" and to hide
    different implementation details from the user.
2.) provide a "Visual Prototyping environment" 
3.) support different programming languages
4.) use glib as a basis for common data structures
5.) use GTK+/Gnome as a highly sophisticated development environment
6.) try to attract other scientific projects to include their code
    
Naturally everything would be released under the LGPL to have as much
feedback as possible from commercial and universitary institutions.

I think, that there are a lot of scientist out there to help in
development as far as there is a concept out. 

I would like to make that happen, but I canīt do this on my own.

So, what do you think?

Dirk

P.S: I do respect the work that was done by the all other teams to 
provide mathematical highly sophisticated libraries. Neither do I want
to replace their work with something new. I want to glue them all
together via CORBA and gmodules, and make them accessable through a
graphical prototyping environment.