Re: Freemat Development

[Samit Basu]

Jacob (et al),


On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Jacob Dawid <address@hidden> wrote:
> Samit,
> maybe we can find a common interface for the requirements a software for
> numerical mathematics must have to serve us all.

Sure.  I have recently begun to wonder about the need for a dedicated
GUI at all.
There was at least one project to build a GUI for octave based on eclipse,
but it seems to have been abandoned.

> I am not quite sure under
> which license you distribute freemat in your own products and what the
> expectations of your user base are, but surely we can agree on working to
> fulfil all our needs equally. Coding together means to not run two competing
> products, so in the end work that has been done will result in better
> software for the user.

I distribute FreeMat under GPLv2.  When FreeMat ships in a product,
the manufacturer
must adhere to the conditions of the GPL (of course).

As far as I can tell, my user base wants more than anything else to
1. Run their MATLAB scripts without modification under FreeMat.
2. Achieve similar performance to what they have grown accustomed to.
3. Track trends in numerical computation.

In a sense, these three principles have guided the design and
implementation of FreeMat
from the beginning.  FreeMat 4 focuses heavily on MATLAB
compatibility, necessitating
a refactoring of the underlying array class (who thought you would
need complex int8s?).
We still get requests for missing functions, but these have become
less frequent over the
years.

For performance, we have been highly focused on the JIT (Just In Time compiler)
to accelerate loops.  The first generation JIT was released in 4.0,
and worked OK.  The
second generation JIT is ready to release in 4.1 and covers much, much
more of the code.

For the 3rd one, the emphasis going forward is on GPUs.  Perhaps
GPU-acceleration of
numerical codes expressed in interpreted languages would be a logical
place to collaborate?

> We have people doing lots of dedicated work, like testing, answering
> questions in IRC, doing packaging, caring for nightly builds, bugfixing and
> translating into various languages. Also, I was not implicitly saying that
> you have to abandon your project. We already took a look over your code to
> check if you have implemented some functionality that we still lack,
> especially a terminal emulation for Windows.

You are welcome to use anything you want, of course (within the terms
of the GPL).
QTTerm.cpp in libs/libXP is the basis of our cross-platform terminal
-- it is not
a real terminal emulator in the sense of VT-100, or such.  I was also unable to
find a terminal widget that was cross platform, and thus wrote QTTerm.

There is no doubt that Octave has tremendous global reach.  It is an excellent
tool, and I have talked to many who love to use it.

> If applicable, I would always opt in to integrate work that has been done
> already. I invite you to participate on our mailing list
> address@hidden

At the suggestion of a few folks, we have an octave-compatibility mode
in FreeMat 4.1, which
will allow FreeMat to parse and execute octave-syntax scripts
natively.  As for further
proposals to integrate the projects, I am open to suggestions.

> This way you will reach more people that hopefully can answer you more
> specific questions.
> Best Regards,
> Jacob

Keep up the excellent work!

Regards,
Samit

> 2011/8/23 Samit Basu <address@hidden>
>>
>> Hello Jacob,
>>
>> Your project looks very interesting.  Octave will definitely benefit
>> from having a user-friendly interface.
>> I am not exactly sure how we would collaborate, but I am open to
>> suggestions.  I have a fairly
>> dedicated user base for FreeMat, and use it daily in my work.  It is
>> also included in several products
>> that I have designed, so I cannot readily abandon it. ;)
>>
>> Regards,
>> Samit
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Jacob Dawid <address@hidden>
>> wrote:
>> > Dear Mr. Basu,
>> > I am an octave developer and saw that you are working on a similar
>> > program,
>> > called freemat. A few months ago I begun developing a GUI for octave
>> > using
>> > Qt, which is aimed to be platform-independent (it's currently not
>> > running on
>> > Windows, but on GNU/Linux and MacOSX). I did not start from scratch,
>> > instead
>> > I mixed several projects from different places. Also, I implemented an
>> > IRC
>> > client, incorporated code from Konsole and use QScintilla as a file
>> > editor.
>> > We have translated the UI into spanish, ukrainian, russian, german and
>> > portuguese already, more to come. I have uploaded a screenshot of the
>> > latest
>> > development version here:
>> > http://www7.pic-upload.de/23.08.11/nmwr94ved6hn.png
>> > Since I saw your profile
>> > ( http://www.ece.illinois.edu/alumni/awards/yaaa/2008-Basu.html ) I am
>> > not
>> > in the position making offers, being a regular student only, but
>> > actually we
>> > are working on similar projects. If you joined us we could all benefit,
>> > starting with sharing code so we do not duplicate efforts, giving you
>> > the
>> > opportunity to work for a huge user base and us having a true
>> > professional
>> > in our team.
>> > If you have questions concerning this, feel free to join us in #octave
>> > in
>> > FreeNode or just mail back. I am gladly awaiting your answer!
>> > Greetings,
>> > Jacob Dawid
>> >
>> > --
>> > Software Development == Church Development
>> > Step 1. Build it.
>> > Step 2. Pray.
>> >
>> > Whitespace - the most ink saving programming language:
>> > http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/index.php .
>> >
>> >
>
>
>
> --
> Software Development == Church Development
> Step 1. Build it.
> Step 2. Pray.
>
> Whitespace - the most ink saving programming language:
> http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/index.php .
>
>