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Review Managers Needed
by Tom Brinkman 06 Feb '07

06 Feb '07

We need volunteer review managers for most of the libraries in the review queue. If your interested, let us know. Preferably, you would have a background in the problem domain, but no association with the library and a contributer to the boost mailing list. The review schedule is available here: http://www.boost.org/more/formal_review_schedule.html . 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/ Maintainers of the Review Queue: Ronald Garcia (garcia (at) cs.indiana.edu) Tom Brinkman (reportbase (at) gmail.com) If there is any errors or ommisions in this report, please send them to Ron or Tom. Here is a summary of the libraries that are in the queue. ------------------------------------- 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: Bimap Author: Matias Capeletto Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Ion Gaztañaga Date: February 15 2007- February 25, 2007 Summary: With Boost.Bimap you can create associative containers where both types can be used as key. You can think a `bimap<X,Y>` as a merge of a `std::map<X,Y>` and a `std::map<Y,X>`. The learning curve of bimap is almost zero if you know how to use standard containers. A big effort was put in mapping the naming scheme of the STL in Boost.Bimap. The library is designed to match the STL common containers. ----------------------------------------- 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: Intrusive Containers Author: Ion Gaztañaga Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Joaquín Mª López Muñoz Date: March 1, 2007 - March 10, 2007 Summary: Existing practice have shown the need for intrusive containers. Widely used C++ libraries, such as C++ Standard Library and Boost have long missed such facilities so that users had to refrain from using those due to mandatory element copying or fall back to techniques like two phase construction to insert logically non-copyable elements in containers and initialize them after that or insert pointers to dynamically allocated objects which is rather inelegant and inefficient since containers also dynamically allocate nodes. The most common use cases for intrusive containers are, when one would like to store non-copyable elements in a container when it's beneficial to avoid needless data copy in performance critical applications. The most prominent example of both the use cases, although written for the most part in C rather than C++, is Linux kernel built solely upon intrusive lists, hash tables and trees. ----------------------------------------- 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: Finite State Machines Author: Andrey Semashev Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: The Boost.FSM library is an implementation of FSM (stands for Finite State Machine) programming concept. There are many cases when a developer would like to distinguish the behavior of a given object depending on some conditions or its internal state. For example, when making software to control an underground charging tourniquiet a programmer would like to separate states in which the tourniquiet may persist: an idle state, when the device awaits for another passenger that would like to pass; a processing state, when the passenger have come and put his ticket into the device; and the passing state, when the tourniquiet lets the passenger pass through. In fact, each state describes different reaction of the machine at the same events (a passenger may only pass after paying for ticket). Obviously, the tourniquiet have to be able to change its internal state in order to function properly, this is called state switching or transitions between states (or just transitions for short). ----------------------------------- Library: Statistical Distributions Author: John Maddock Location: Boost Sandbox Vault (math-toolkit) Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: Provides many of the tools required to implement mathematical special functions: hopefully the presence of these will encourage other authors to contribute more special function implementations in the future. There are helpers for the evaluation of infinite series, continued fractions and rational approximations. There is a fairly comprehensive set of root finding and function minimisation algorithms: both with and without derivative support. A Remez algorithm implementation allows for the locating of minimax rational approximations. There are also (experimental) classes for the manipulation of polynomials, for testing a special function against tabulated test data, and for the rapid generation of test data and/or data for output to an external graphing application. ----------------------------------- Library: Floating Point Utilities Author: Johan Råde Location: Boost Sandbox Vault http://boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?directory=Math%20-%20Numerics 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: mcs::units Author: Matthias Schabel Location: Boost Sandbox Vault http://www.boost-consulting.org/vault/ (units) Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: mcs::units is a library providing zero-runtime overhead dimensional analysis for unit and quantity calculations. It provides support for 1) unit systems comprised of arbitrary sets of base units 2) arbitrary user-defined value types 3) support for heterogenous operator algebras (i.e. Z op(X,Y)) 4) support for basic outputting of quantities 5) optional support for implicit unit conversions It does not support 1) runtime units or quantities 2) input or parsing of quantities ----------------------------------- Library: Switch Author: Steven Watanabe Location: Boost Sandbox Vault http://tinyurl.com/yvssgx Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: Needed

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Review of the Accumulators library begins today, Jan 29
by Tom Brinkman 30 Jan '07

30 Jan '07

The formal review of the Boost.Accumulators library, submitted by Eric Neibler begins today and ends on Wednesday, February 7. The library is available from http://boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?directory=Math%20-%20Numerics >From the documentation: Boost.Accumulators is both a library for incremental statistical computation as well as an extensible framework for incremental calculation in general. The library deals primarily with the concept of an accumulator, which is a primitive computational entity that accepts data one sample at a time and maintains some internal state. These accumulators may offload some of their computations on other accumulators, on which they depend. Accumulators are grouped within an accumulator set. Boost.Accumulators resolves the inter-dependencies between accumulators in a set and ensures that accumulators are processed in the proper order. Your comments may be brief or lengthy. 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. All interested parties are encouraged to submit a review. These can be sent to the developer list, the user list, or if you don't want to share your review with the general public it can be sent directly to me. Thanks to all for the work you will do on this review. John Phillips Review Manager

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Review Wizard Report
by Tom Brinkman 06 Jan '07

06 Jan '07

Review Wizard Report Thanks to "Ron Garcia" for keeping the Review Schedule page up to date: The current schedule is located at: 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 most of the libraries. If your interested, let us know. Preferably, you would have a background in the problem domain, but no association with the library and 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. ------------------------------------- Library: Accumulators Author: Eric Niebler Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manger: John R. Phillips Date: January 29, 2007 - February 7, 2007 Summary: The Accumulators Framework is framework for performing incremental calculations. Usage of the framework follows the following pattern: Users build a computational object, called an accumulator_set<>, by selecting the computations in which they are interested, or authoring their own computational primitives which fit within the framework. Users push data into the accumulator_set<> object one sample at a time. The accumulator_set<> computes the requested quantities in the most efficient method possible, resolving dependencies between requested calculations, possibly cacheing intermediate results. The Accumulators Framework defines the utilities needed for defining primitive computational elements, called accumulators. It also provides the accumulator_set<> type, described above. ------------------------------------- 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: Bimap Author: Matias Capeletto Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: With Boost.Bimap you can create associative containers where both types can be used as key. You can think a `bimap<X,Y>` as a merge of a `std::map<X,Y>` and a `std::map<Y,X>`. The learning curve of bimap is almost zero if you know how to use standard containers. A big effort was put in mapping the naming scheme of the STL in Boost.Bimap. The library is designed to match the STL common containers. ----------------------------------------- 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: Intrusive Containers Author: Ion Gaztañaga Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: Existing practice have shown the need for intrusive containers. Widely used C++ libraries, such as C++ Standard Library and Boost have long missed such facilities so that users had to refrain from using those due to mandatory element copying or fall back to techniques like two phase construction to insert logically non-copyable elements in containers and initialize them after that or insert pointers to dynamically allocated objects which is rather inelegant and inefficient since containers also dynamically allocate nodes. The most common use cases for intrusive containers are, when one would like to store non-copyable elements in a container when it's beneficial to avoid needless data copy in performance critical applications. The most prominent example of both the use cases, although written for the most part in C rather than C++, is Linux kernel built solely upon intrusive lists, hash tables and trees. ----------------------------------------- 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: Finite State Machines Author: Andrey Semashev Location: Boost Sandbox Vault Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: The Boost.FSM library is an implementation of FSM (stands for Finite State Machine) programming concept. There are many cases when a developer would like to distinguish the behavior of a given object depending on some conditions or its internal state. For example, when making software to control an underground charging tourniquiet a programmer would like to separate states in which the tourniquiet may persist: an idle state, when the device awaits for another passenger that would like to pass; a processing state, when the passenger have come and put his ticket into the device; and the passing state, when the tourniquiet lets the passenger pass through. In fact, each state describes different reaction of the machine at the same events (a passenger may only pass after paying for ticket). Obviously, the tourniquiet have to be able to change its internal state in order to function properly, this is called state switching or transitions between states (or just transitions for short). ----------------------------------- Library: Statistical Distributions Author: John Maddock Location: Boost Sandbox Vault (math-toolkit) Review Manager: Needed Date: Needed Summary: Provides many of the tools required to implement mathematical special functions: hopefully the presence of these will encourage other authors to contribute more special function implementations in the future. There are helpers for the evaluation of infinite series, continued fractions and rational approximations. There is a fairly comprehensive set of root finding and function minimisation algorithms: both with and without derivative support. A Remez algorithm implementation allows for the locating of minimax rational approximations. There are also (experimental) classes for the manipulation of polynomials, for testing a special function against tabulated test data, and for the rapid generation of test data and/or data for output to an external graphing application.

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[ANN] Boost.Time_series: feedback requested
by Eric Niebler 11 Dec '06

11 Dec '06

I'm pleased to announce the availability of a new library for computing with time series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_series) From the documentation: > The purpose of the Boost.Time_series library is to provide data structures, numerical operators and algorithms to operate on time series. A time series is a series of data points, sampled at regular intervals. The library provides numerous time series containers, each with different time/space trade-offs, and a hierarchy of concepts which allow the time series to be manipulated generically. The library also provides operators and algorithms which use the generic interfaces to perform calculations on time series and accumulate various statistics about them. > > Boost.Time_series does not yet contain all the algorithms one might want in order to perform full time series analysis. However, the key contribution of Boost.Time_series is the framework and the rich hierarchy of concepts with which such algorithms can be written to efficiently and generically process series of data with widely divergent in-memory representations and performance characteristics. Boost.Time_series provides several such series containers, as well as mechanisms for defining additional series types and algorithms that fit within the framework. Some examples of series types that are provided are: dense, sparse, piecewise constant, heaviside and others, as well as adaptors for providing shifted, scaled and clipped series views. The documentation can be found here: http://boost-sandbox.sf.net/libs/time_series/doc/html/index.html The code is in time_series.zip, which can be downloaded here: http://boost-consulting.com/vault/index.php?directory=Math%20-%20Numerics Any suggestions for improvements are most welcome. -- Eric Niebler Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com

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Function Types Accepted - November 28, 2006
by Tom Brinkman 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

Function Types Review Managers Summary Tom Brinkman Accepted The library has matured much between reviews. It is my conclusion that the documentation, the examples, the test suite, and the library's interface all meet the requirements to be accepted as Boost library. My own experience with the library was good. I compiled all the examples, read the documentation and have become familiar with the design. However, I did have some compiling issues with two out of three of my linux machines. I fear that this library may face some compatiblity issues with some of the lessor supported platforms The reason for the relatively low review count is that this library is for library "authors" and not for "end users". The low review count is not a concern and does not reflect on the quality of this library, While these are not issues required for acceptance, I do think that this library should eventually be merged with the "type traits" library. I'll leave that up to Tobias and others to make the final determination of how to make that happen, or if it is even practical. Clearly, there does appear to be some redundancy between the "type traits" library and the "function types" library ("tags"). I would encourage Tobias to get in contact with maintainers of those libraries and flush that issue out. It is my opinion that the "Function Types" library has met or exceeded all of the conditions set by the "Full-Review" conducted by John Maddock last year and should be accepted into boost. Congratulations and thanks to Tobias for his "Function Types" library; I'm looking forward to seeing it in a future version of boost. ----Download---- http://tinyurl.com/qaf5f ----Author---- Tobias Schwinger ----Review Dates---- June 2005 - Full Review November 2006 - Mini Review ----Review Manager(s)---- John Maddock (Full Review) Tom Brinkman (Mini Review) ----Full Review ---- 2005-Jun-6 to 2005-June-16 Accepted int Boost, subject to a mini-review. ----Mini-Review---- 2006 November 6 - 2006 November 17 Accepted into Boost

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Ann: Alpha release of Boost.TR1-1.34
by John Maddock 09 Nov '06

09 Nov '06

I've placed an alpha release of the TR1 subset of Boost on the sourceforge download page: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=7586&package_id=1893… Eventually, this package will track Boost-1.34 releases, but until that happens, I wanted to test the water and see how a subset like this would be received, and how best to organise it's packaging etc. So any feedback you have would be most welcome! The subset includes: TR1 Reference Wrappers Shared_ptr result_of mem_fn Function Object Binders Polymorphic Function Wrappers Type Traits Random Numbers Tuples Array Hash Functions Regular Expressions Complex Number Algorithms Enjoy! Regards, John Maddock.

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[review-results] pimpl_ptr
by Rene Rivera 06 Oct '06

06 Oct '06

Unfortunately I must say that the pimpl_ptr library will not be part of Boost at this time. The results where decidedly against the library in the proposed form. A few points about the library where clear: * Many want to see a pimpl_ptr in Boost. * The proposed design was considered to not do enough towards addressing the handle-body idiom within C++. * Some of the ideas, the policies, where both liked and disliked. Which raised the specter of the lack of a policy pointer. Hopefully we will see this idiom addressed in some near future. Last, I must apologize for the late results. But I must thank Ronald for the gentle prodding :-) -- -- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything -- Redshift Software, Inc. - http://redshift-software.com -- rrivera/acm.org - grafik/redshift-software.com -- 102708583/icq - grafikrobot/aim - grafikrobot/yahoo

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Statistical Distributions / Mathematical Special Functions: revised URL's
by John Maddock 06 Oct '06

06 Oct '06

Since some people have had problems accessing the previous URL's given, the library is now available from the following locations: www.johnmaddock.co.uk/toolkit Or http://freespace.virgin.net/boost.regex/toolkit/index.html Or Go to the Boost Vault at http://boost-consulting.com/vault and cd into the "Math - Numerics" directory. Note that the code and documentation are separate downloads. In addition there is the subset of Boost-1.34 used by the lib here: http://freespace.virgin.net/boost.regex/toolkit/miniboost.zip Please note that the lib will not build with Boost-1.33.1 since it uses some parts of Boost.TR1. And finally... Bleeding edge cvs access is available via the Boost-Sandbox: http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost-sandbox/ Once you have checked out the sandbox you will need to do a: cvs update -r math_toolkit at which point everything should disappear except the current math-toolkit code. Regards, John Maddock.

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[boost] Review of Generic Image Library (GIL) begins today, Oct5, 2006
by Tom Brinkman 05 Oct '06

05 Oct '06

The review of Generic Image Library (GIL) begins today, October 5, 2006, and continues through October 15, 2006. Please download the library at: http://opensource.adobe.com/gil. Minor change are being made regularly (daily), so check the site often for updates. I highly recommend viewing the 55 minute Breeze presentation describing the library at: http://opensource.adobe.com/gil/presentation/index.htm A tutorial is available at: http://opensource.adobe.com/gil/gil_tutorial.pdf A design guide is availage at: http://opensource.adobe.com/gil/gil_design_guide.pdf Description: The Generic Image Library (GIL) is a C++ library that abstracts the image representation from operations on images. It allows for writing the image processing algorithm once and having it work for images in any color space, channel depth and pixel organization, or even synthetic images, without compromising the performance. GIL has an extension mechanism that allows for adding extra functionality. Two extensions are currently provided – one for image I/O and one for handling images whose properties are specified at run-time. Review questions: Please always explicitly state in your review, whether you think the library should be accepted into Boost. You might want to comment on the following questions: - 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? Tom Brinkman _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/ listinfo.cgi/boost

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Ann: Statistical distributions / Mathematical Special Functions
by John Maddock 04 Oct '06

04 Oct '06

This package consists of 3 related components, and we're now seeking further feedback on these before the final push prior to a review: Statistical Distributions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Following feedback from the previous preview, we have re-organised so that distributions are now C++ classes. See the docs and especially the tutorial for illustrations on how this will be useful in real life. We would especially welcome feedback from those with experience of using statistics, and indeed from professional statisticians who are probably not Boosters. Mathematical Special Functions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These are currently focused on those functions that are useful for statistical applications: Floating point classification. Gamma/lgamma/digamma/beta/erf/erfc Ratios of gamma functions Factorials The incomplete gamma and beta functions. The inverses of the gamma, beta, and error functions. Derivatives of the incomplete gamma and beta functions. Compared to the previous release, most of the changes involve accuracy and quality of implementation issues. Error handling has now been revised to provide a comprehensive package-wide error handling scheme complete with meaningful error messages. Toolkit ~~~~~~~ Provides tools to assist in the implementation of numerical methods: Infinite series evaluation. Continued fraction evaluation. Polynomial and rational function evaluation. Root finding with derivatives (Newton/Halley/Schroeder methods). Root finding without derivatives. Function minimisation. Misc Tools ~~~~~~~~~~ These are strictly experimental, but are used in the development of approximations: they are provided to hopefully encourage others to develop further special function implementations. Tools include: Polynomial arithmetic and manipulation. Minimax approximations (the Remez algorithm). Helper functions used in testing etc. Documentation and source downloads are available online at www.johnmaddock.co.uk/toolkit Regards, John Maddock.

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