ublas: questions from a newcomer

From: stuart macgregor (yg-boost-users_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-03-21 08:26:38

I am interested in ublas for linear algebra.  In addition to the simple 
operations supported by ublas I will need comprehensive access to lapack 
for the real work.

I see in the wiki that some work has been done in this area.  Is this 
numeric/binding stuff working, and can it be readily extended to the full 
set of lapack routines?

Some kind of meta program to generate lapack interfaces from a parameter 
spec would be nice (ruby/perl? or just a description of what needs to be 
done)  Then I could happily bring up the interfaces I need.

Is there any way to generate vectore and matrices which do not own the data 
buffer which they provide access to - 'view' or 'sub' objects in other lin 
alg packages?  This would be very valuable to me for interfacing existing 
code, without duplicating storage and doing unnecessary copies.  I found it 
difficult to determine from the current documentation.

I have one worry: Ublas, and most of the boost modules, seems to me not for 
the faint hearted.  They are clearly powerful, but seem to expect a lot 
from a potential user.  

Are these facilities aimed at library writers rather than users whoes skill 
focus may lie in other domains?  

I am thinking of apl (and related J++ (not java)) which is very powerful, 
but has only minority appeal because it is too alien and unnatural for 
ordinary mortals.  The advocates take great pride in how powerful a small 
and almost incomprehensible line of code can be (FFT in one short line 
etc.), and implicitly how clever they are to generate and understand it.

I expect that a user level doc may eventually make ublas/lapack much more 
approachable by a non computer science mathematician or engineer.

Forgive me if the above sounds critical and ungracious for free software, 
but I want to use boost and I am worried that it may be too demanding for 
its benefites to be justified for use by the group of people I work with.

-- 
Stuart