Re: math routines

[Ben Pfaff]

"Brad Morantz" <address@hidden> writes:

> I am a mathematical scientist, and have used SPSS and am
> capable of writing some of the math routines for this package.
> I do my work in Fortran, as I am a mathematician not a
> programmer (as major focus).  This offers the advantage of
> utilizing multi-processors when available, if compiled on a
> multi-processor computer.  I use either g95 or the intel
> compiler.  Because of the matrix commands, this takes the
> accent off the programming and onto the math.  I do not program
> in C or C++

Thank you for your generous offer.  I wish we (PSPP developers)
had a better way, at the moment, to take advantage of it.  One of
the big issues we're facing is how to make it easy for
mathematical programmers to incorporate their code without
requiring someone to write a lot of supporting code for command
parsing and output formatting.  Right now, the math (which really
has to be thought of as the "core" of the program) is drowned in
a sea of supporting code.  And, unfortunately, this means that
we're not really prepared to accept outside help when it's
primarily mathematical in focus.

In the long term, say a couple of years down the road, I hope
PSPP will be better prepared for this.  Then we'll be able to
accept help from a much larger community of people.
-- 
Ben Pfaff 
email: address@hidden
web: http://benpfaff.org