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[boost] [Review] Quantitative Units library review begins today, March 26
by John Phillips 26 Mar '07

26 Mar '07

The review for the Quantitative Units library, submitted by Matthias Schabel and Steven Watanabe begins today, March 26 and ends April 4. From the documentation: The Boost.Units library is a C++ implementation of zero runtime overhead compile-time dimensional analysis in a general and extensible manner, treating it as a generic metaprogramming problem. Support for units and quantities (defined as a unit and associated value) for arbitrary unit system models and arbitrary value types is provided, as is a general facility for unit conversions enabling fine-grained control over conversion. Complete SI and CGS unit system models are provided, along with systems for angles measured in degrees, gradians, and radians. A small subset of the SI system including only length, mass, and time is developed in the examples as a demonstration of the relative ease of adding new unit systems and the extensibility of the library architecture. In this review, the authors and I expect that there will be active discussions on two topics. In every review there is a discussion of the quality of the library implementation and documentation, and it is obviously expected and desired here. Also, since this library is specifically designed as a compile time library with no attempt to provide unit conversions or other runtime facilities it is expected that the review will include an active thread on whether this is the correct design decision. In specific, this is a different approach than that taken by Andy Little's submission of last year. Because some people will be more interested in one or another of these two discussions, I request that everyone clearly marks comment topics to show which they are discussing. This will also improve Matthias' and Steven's ability to respond usefully and my ability to produce review results and recommendations that accurately reflect the desires of the boost community. In general, please include the following in your review. Your comments may be brief or lengthy, but basically the Review Manager needs your evaluation of the library. If you identify problems along the way, please note if they are minor, serious, or showstoppers. Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review: • What is your evaluation of the design? • What is your evaluation of the implementation? • What is your evaluation of the documentation? • What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? • Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? • How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? • Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? And finally, every review should answer this question: • Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. Review comments can be sent to the developer list, the user list, or directly to me if you don't wish to comment publicly. Thank you in advance for your time and work in this review. John Phillips Review Manager _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/ listinfo.cgi/boost

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Review Schedule
by Tom Brinkman 17 Mar '07

17 Mar '07

Review Schedule http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_schedule.html . If you have any changes, post them as a reply to this thread. We need experienced review managers for many of the libraries in the review queue. A few of them have been waiting for a volunteer for a few months now, such as boost::exception, boost::GloballyUniqueIdentifier and boost::scope_exit. If your interested, let us know. Preferably, you will have a background in the problem domain, but no association with the library and are a regular contributer on the boost mailing list. You can read the "review manager" requirements at the following link: http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_process.htm Most of the libraries are located at the Boost Sandbox Vault, located here: http://boost-consulting.com/vault/ Here is a summary of the libraries that are in the queue waiting for a "review manager" volunteer. ------------------------------------- Library: Exception Author: Emil Dotchevski Location: http://www.revergestudios.com/boost-exception/boost-exception.zip Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: The purpose of Boost Exception is to free designers of exception classes from having to consider what data needs to be stored in exception objects in order for the catch site to be able to make sense of what went wrong. When Boost Exception is used, arbitrary values can be stored in any exception. This can be done directly in the throw-expression, or at a later time as the exception object propagates up the call stack. The ability to add data to any exception object after it has been thrown is important, because often some of the information needed to handle an exception is unavailable at the time of the throw. ----------------------------------------- Library: Globally Unique Identifier Author: Andy Tompkins Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: A guid, or globally unique identifier, is an identifier standard used in many disciplines including computer networks, distributed computing, and databases. They can be used to tag objects with very short lifetimes, to reliably identify very persistent objects across a network. An attractive feature of guids is their relative small size, of 128-bits, compared to alternatives. Also the creation of guids does not require a centralized authority. ----------------------------------------- Library: Scope Exit Author: Alexander Nasonov Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: The scope-exit-arg-pp-seq is Boot.Preprocessor sequence of identifiers that can be used inside scope-exit-body. The direct-declarator is declarator-id followed by optional argument of type boost::scope_exit_group (inside brackets or after the equal sign). This construct executes scope-exit-body at the close of the current scope. ----------------------------------- Library: Floating Point Utilities Author: Johan Råde Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: Proposed Additions to the Boost Math Library <boost/math/fpclassify.hpp> Functions for floating point number classification: fpclassify, isfinite, isinf, isnan, isnormal. Follows TR1. <boost/math/signbit.hpp> Functions for floating point number sign bit access and modification: signbit, copysign, changesign. Follows TR1. <boost/math/nonfinite_num_facets.hpp> Facets that parse and format infinity and NaN according to the C99 standard. Used for portable handling of infinity and NaN in text streams. ----------------------------------- Library: Switch Author: Steven Watanabe Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: Needed

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Review of Intrusive library begins today March 12
by Joaquín Mª López Muñoz 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

The review of Ion Gaztañagas's Intrusive library begins today, March 12, and extends up to March 21. * Download: Boost vault: http://boost-consulting.com/vault/ Folder: Containers File: intrusive.2007-03-04.zip * Online docs: http://ice.prohosting.com/newfunk/boost/libs/intrusive * Description: Intrusive is a library presenting some intrusive containers to the world of C++. While intrusive containers were and are widely used in C, they became more and more forgotten in C++ due to the presence of the standard containers, which don't support intrusive techniques. Intrusive not only reintroduces this technique to C++, but also encapsulates the implementation in STL-like interfaces. Hence anyone familiar with standard containers can easily use Intrusive. Like their STL-counterparts, intrusive containers use template parameters to control the stored data types and some special aspects of intrusive containers. * Compilers tested (so far): Visual 7.1/WinXP Visual 8.0/WinXP GCC 4.1.1/MinGW Intel 9.1/WinXP GCC 4.1.2/Linux * Review questions: Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review: - What is your evaluation of the design? - What is your evaluation of the implementation? - What is your evaluation of the documentation? - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? - Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? And finally, every review should answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. I invite you to submit your review, either publicly to the developers or the users lists, or else, if for whatever reason you don't want to publicize it, directly to me. Thank you for investing some of your time on reviewing Ion Gaztañaga's Intrusive library. The Review Manager, Joaquín M López Muñoz Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo

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[boost] Review of Intrusive library begins today March 12
by Joaquín Mª López Muñoz 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

The review of Ion Gaztañagas's Intrusive library begins today, March 12, and extends up to March 21. * Download: Boost vault: http://boost-consulting.com/vault/ Folder: Containers File: intrusive.2007-03-04.zip * Online docs: http://ice.prohosting.com/newfunk/boost/libs/intrusive * Description: Intrusive is a library presenting some intrusive containers to the world of C++. While intrusive containers were and are widely used in C, they became more and more forgotten in C++ due to the presence of the standard containers, which don't support intrusive techniques. Intrusive not only reintroduces this technique to C++, but also encapsulates the implementation in STL-like interfaces. Hence anyone familiar with standard containers can easily use Intrusive. Like their STL-counterparts, intrusive containers use template parameters to control the stored data types and some special aspects of intrusive containers. * Compilers tested (so far): Visual 7.1/WinXP Visual 8.0/WinXP GCC 4.1.1/MinGW Intel 9.1/WinXP GCC 4.1.2/Linux * Review questions: Here are some questions you might want to answer in your review: - What is your evaluation of the design? - What is your evaluation of the implementation? - What is your evaluation of the documentation? - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? - Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? And finally, every review should answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. I invite you to submit your review, either publicly to the developers or the users lists, or else, if for whatever reason you don't want to publicize it, directly to me. Thank you for investing some of your time on reviewing Ion Gaztañaga's Intrusive library. The Review Manager, Joaquín M López Muñoz Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

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[review][bimap] Bimap accepted
by Ion Gaztañaga 03 Mar '07

03 Mar '07

Hi to all, The Bimap library submitted by Matias Capeletto has been accepted into Boost. Thanks to all reviewers and all who contributed to the library in the informal review. Thanks also to Matias for his submission and Joaquin for his mentoring effort on this Google SoC project. We've received 6 reviews (Alisdair, Fernando, Jeff, John, Thorsten and Tony), all of which were positive. If I weren't the review manager, I would also make a positive review of this library, so I'm pretty happy with the results. Now I have a bit of work reviewing all the comments, suggestions and Matias' replies to write an small summary of requested changes and conclusions. The "relation" view, and some basic names ("first"/"second" vs. "left"/"right") were the most active topics. But everyone has considered Bimap useful, well-written, and well documented. I'll post the summary following week. Regards, Ion

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[Ann] Boost and Google Summer of Code 2007
by John Maddock 02 Mar '07

02 Mar '07

Dear Boosters, It is a pleasure to announce that Boost will be applying as a mentoring organization for the upcoming Google Summer of Code 2007. There is a lot of preparation work to be done and little time to do it. A page has been set up at the Boost Wiki: http://www.crystalclearsoftware.com/cgi-bin/boost_wiki/wiki.pl?Google_Summe… which will hold a list of preliminary ideas for students to take up and use in their own applications to GSoC07. Please feel free to contribute by directly editing the Wiki page. Any questions, requests for feedback etc. can be conducted through the Boost lists. Remember that this initiative, as Boost itself, is the result of many individuals' contribution and ideas, which means we are looking forward to *your* feedback. Sincerely, John Maddock

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[Review][Bimap] Bimap review extended until March 2nd
by Ion Gaztañaga 22 Feb '07

22 Feb '07

Hi to all, Bimap review has been extended until March 2nd. I encourage all boosters to give a try to this great library. The links are: Start reading the documentation here: http://tinyurl.com/y95qng And download the library here: http://boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?&directory=Containers Regards, Ion

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[boost] [Review results] Accumulators accepted
by John Phillips 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

The accumulator library submitted by Eric Niebler has been accepted into boost. Thanks, once again to all of the people who contributed to the development of the library, to everyone who contributed to the review, and to Eric for a fine submission. During the review, Eric and some of the reviewers had a useful discussion about issues for the library, and possible improvements. A condensed version of the outcomes from that discussion is included below. Also, in perusing the archives for other comments about the library, I found a couple of other issues that were discussed. I have included them below, as well. In many cases, Eric acknowledged issues and committed to a fix during the review. Those issues are included below, along with the current state of some of the more open ended discussions to provide easy reference for all interested parties. For my own organizational convenience, I have numbered the entries below. This does not indicate relative importance. 1) Prior to the review it was asked why the function that returns a histogram is called the density. Little was done at the time, as Eric suggested it should be addressed during the review. As far as I can see, it was not brought back up during the review process. This should be examined to make sure that density is the best name for the function, and changed if needed. 2) There are a number of variant implementations of some statistical functions. The documentation should clearly indicate which variants focus on quick and dirty implementations, and which provide more numeric stability. Eric has stated that this will be addressed in the revisions of the documentation. 3) The question was asked whether or not it is feasible to provide outlier rejection for some or all of the accumulators. I can find no further discussion of this question in the review, however, since this is a very important statistical technique it would be a good feature to investigate for future addition. 4) Michael Stevens expressed interest in a form of the variance that accumulates the differences squared iteratively and divides the result by n. I saw no direct response, but this is basically what the immediate_variance does. 5) Interest was expressed in making the compensated sum the default version of the sum. It could be supplimented by the quick and dirty version as an alternative. However, since there are reports that many optimizing compilers turn the compensated sum algorithm into the same compiled code as the simple sum, tests should be done to see if there is any real gain before the modification. 6) There are a number of broken links in the quickbook docs. This has been acknowledged and is in line for a fix. 7) Steven Watanabe suggested changing the structure to move away from the fusion vector dependence. After discussion it appears that fusion cons,. may be a better choice. However there may be a use case for the original library that precipitated the choice of fusion vector. This should be checked, and if Steven's idea holds up under scrutiny, it should be implemented. 8) There is a request that the user guide specifies which header each component is in. This has been acknowledged and is in line for a fix. 9) The macro BOOST_PARAMETER_NESTED_KEYWORD has no description in the docs. This has been acknowledged and is in line for a fix. 10) There were a number of requests for improvements to the reference manual, ranging from wording changes to a reorganization that reflects class structure instead of header structure. In some cases, these improvements are direct, and they are in line for fixes. In other cases there is currently no known way to do it with the boost tool chain. Eric, and many of the other members of boost would greatly appreciate anyone who has ideas and time to fix the harder problems. 11) There was a suggestion that the documentation could mention the TR1 reference_wrapper as a future solution to the accumulator_set_wrapper issues, and the implementation could be changed once there is a boost accepted implementation of the reference_wrapper. My impression was that I was not the only person who didn't realize that it could solve that problem. 12) Functions that allow a range of values to be pushed into an accumulator set all at once should be added. This could include forms that take begin and end iterators and forms that take a sequence. Eric agreed that this is a good idea. 13) Paul Bristow mentioned that the kurtosis has a confusing naming history. What the docs refer to as the kurtosis would better be called the "kurtosis excess." His suggestion was that a name change be considered and that the docs be modified to acknowledge the confusion whether the name is changed or not. Eric agreed with this suggestion. 14) Accessors for the standard deviation, the unbiased variance and the unbiased (N-1) standard deviation were requested. The fact that John Maddock fell into the trap of miscalculating the standard deviation shows that even experts can make mistakes when converting from the variance. Thus, it is a good idea for inclusion. Eric said he is interested, and he would also welcome submissions that provide these functions. 15) The docs mention "Even the extractors can accept named parameters. In a bit, we'll see a situation where that is useful," but there is no later mention. Eric has an example he intended that to refer to, but forgot to include it in the last edition of the docs. He intends to fix that. 16) The ability to "reset" and accumulator was requested. Eric pointed out that it is quite possible to make accumulators with reset methods. He also pointed out that it might be desirable to reset accumulator_sets, but this could also pose a problem. It is not clear what should happen if one of the accumulators used by an accumulator set does not have a reset method. Further thought should be given to this for possible inclusion in a later revision. 17) Autocorrelation for accumulator_sets should be explored. Matthias already plans to do this in the coming year for possible inclusion in a later revision. 18) The documentation on what to expect when one accumulator is dropped while a second accumulator that depends on the first is not dropped should be clarified. Careful thought on this may lead to a change in current behavior. 19) There is a request that the docs state more clearly what happens when more than one accumulator maps to the same feature. Eric plans to include this in documentation revisions. 20) It is not currently possible to combine accumulators. In some very common use cases, this would be an important feature. However, not all accumulators can be combined in any sensible way. A solution to this will require some study and design work, but it is a valuable addition for a future revision. One possible solution is to have a compile time check to see if the accumulators are combinable. 21) While finding newer/faster/more robust algorithms is not a bad thing, the focus of this review has been the interfaces. If the interfaces are good, improved algorithms can be worked in later. There is some minimum standard for performance, but it is not the focal point or the submission. 22) Javier and Hans submitted lists of documentation corrections that Eric acknowledged and plans to fix. 23) It is agreed that there is a need for a more gentle and thorough getting started document. This should include some compelling examples that show why this is a good design decision. 24) More of the formulas should be available in the documentation. Eric requested volunteers to make some formulas into LaTeX, and I have already contacted him to do so. 25) The docs for how to incorporate new features should be improved. This can be helped tremendously if the people who had problems doing this would send Eric descriptions of where they had problems with the docs and the process. Thanks again to everyone for your time and work. Any problems or misrepresentations in the above list are purely my fault, and I apologize for them. John _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/ listinfo.cgi/boost

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BoostCon 2007 update
by David Abrahams 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to gmane.comp.lib.boost.user,gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel,gmane.comp.lib.boost.interest as well. A couple of quick items: 1. The conference format has changed. For many practical reasons, the "two 3-day tracks with one day of overlap on Wednesday" format proved unworkable. Among those: * Many (most) sessions don't fall neatly into the library-user/library-developer track distinction. We see this as a good thing, as it means we have more material that's of broad interest. * It made the hotel reservation pattern very difficult; we were afraid many people would be shut out of rooms at the conference hotel and also that the hotel would not be able sell the entire reserved room block, which could cost the (non-profit) conference a lot of money, as we had to agree to be liable for unsold room nights. Instead, we're running two tracks concurrently all week. We thought attendees should be prepared for that change. 2. We expect the new boostcon website will go live and registration for the conference will open in the next couple of days. We're just clearing away a few final details. In the meantime, the existing http://www.boostcon.com has the old information. Regards, and see you at BoostCon, -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com

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Re: [Boost-announce] [bimap] URL Correction: Review of the Bimap library begins today Feb 15
by Ion Gaztañaga 15 Feb '07

15 Feb '07

Hello everyone again: I'm resending this because the first URL was not correct. The other URLs were correct, so to sum up:: The library can be downloaded from Boost.Vault/Containers: URL: http://www.boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?directory=Containers Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/ysfclr Online documentation and the documentation package can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/y95qng Sorry for the noise, Ion

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