[clean-list] Communicating with other programs

[Siegfried Gonzi]

David McClain barabh@qwest.net schrieb,

Hallo David,

>But since you are interested mostly in the graphics for plotting scientific
>data, why not begin there?

No, no. This was only a suggestion. I would be glad to hear from you any suggestions and feasability
thougths (under the assumption that you are any longer interested in; it is better to cancel a project
before it has begun start).

Maybe the following is a first table to work through:

A) Clean is free but for non-commercial use only (is this a hindrance for anybdoy?)

B) It is maybe harder in Clean to communicate with the low-level OS stuff, compared to OCaml. With respect
to the graphics library (which you mentioned is a C++ library): does HtoClean also include: calling C++
functions or even complete libraries?

C) There is no obvious command-line Clean available. But I personally do not find this as a weakness. Even
in Matlab or IDL I use seldom the command-line but instead I prefer a script which I load into the
workspace.

D) Naturally, there is a performance difference between C and Clean. Conservatively speaking the factor
can be marked with "2". I do not have any problems with this fact. I do not say: we are getting every day
more RAM and processor speed (this argument is as silly as one says: I smoke 100 cigarettes every day but
I believe I will not die due to cancer because medicine will keep pace...).



>Once you have scientific graphics available to you, you might find no
>further need to continue the porting of NML to Clean.

I would have no problem if you decide to port alone the NML code to Clean. Often people work better, when
they work alone. But you should consider the above points.

> I wrote NML to be intentionally dynamically typed, so that ad-hoc
>computations at the keyboard are not as painful as doing type-correct coding
>in OCaml. Also, the math routines are all overloaded to handle vectors as
>well as scalars, unlike OCaml.

I am open for any suggestion, and as I said it: if you prefer to work alone, please say it. I will really
honour your work. But I think it is no mistake to write what you (honestly) think and especially what you
do not like about Clean and will impede you..


Regards,
Siegfried Gonzi