the element-wise operations are most of the time syntactic sugar but it makes a code easier to read.
For example in matlab vector + scalar is equivalent to vector + scalar_vector(scalar).
And mathematically, this is what we must think. However, it's easier to write vector + scalar.
I put things like sum(...) and others functions in the section on algorithms. Indeed, we need more of them.
So we have vector/matrix reductions which have a correct mathematical meaning. We can make things even more beautiful than matlab. Instead of passing a parameter of 1 or 2 to specify row or column wise (for matrix), we can tag the function. Let's see what's the nicest.
And we have "non-correct" mathematical functions which are convenient to write.
Regarding your second question, someone mentioned the fact we could have both:
- basic implementations of those algorithms (maybe not all of them but the most important),
- bindinds.
Because most of the people expect to have this type of algorithm. We will explain in the documentation that for those who wants to have faster, better, shinier implementations, they have to use the bindings. We will not look at providing the best implementations ever, but fairly good one. Yes, it's redondant but it will please a lot of user and make ublas a more complete library. And we will make a lot of noise about this when it's ready ! :-D
Cheers,
David
--
David Bellot, PhD
david.bellot@gmail.com
http://david.bellot.free.fr