Mercurial > hg > octave-thorsten
annotate PROJECTS @ 9213:b9986ce0047c
update PROJECTS
| author | John W. Eaton <jwe@octave.org> |
|---|---|
| date | Mon, 18 May 2009 15:11:22 -0400 |
| parents | 1052a66078cf |
| children | b4d2080b6df7 |
| rev | line source |
|---|---|
| 3162 | 1 <html> |
| 2 <pre> | |
| 2330 | 3 Octave PROJECTS -*- text -*- |
| 4 =============== | |
| 5 | |
| 8921 | 6 Look in the Octave source archive on Savannah for a possibly more |
| 7 current copy. Also, if you start working steadily on a project, | |
| 8 please let maintainers@octave.org know. We might have information | |
| 9 that could help you. You should also read the Contributing Guidelines | |
| 10 chapter in the Octave manual. | |
| 2330 | 11 |
| 12 This list is not exclusive -- there are many other things that might | |
| 8921 | 13 be good projects, but it might instead be something we already have. |
| 14 Also, some of the following items may not actually be considered good | |
| 15 ideas now. So please check with maintainers@octave.org before you | |
| 16 start working on some large project. | |
| 17 | |
| 2330 | 18 |
| 19 --------- | |
| 20 Numerical: | |
| 21 --------- | |
| 22 | |
| 23 * Improve logm, and sqrtm. | |
| 24 | |
| 3713 | 25 * Improve complex mapper functions. See W. Kahan, ``Branch Cuts for |
| 26 Complex Elementary Functions, or Much Ado About Nothing's Sign | |
| 27 Bit'' (in The State of the Art in Numerical Analysis, eds. Iserles | |
| 28 and Powell, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987) for explicit | |
| 29 trigonometric formulae. | |
| 2330 | 30 |
| 31 * Make functions like gamma() return the right IEEE Inf or NaN | |
| 32 values for extreme args or other undefined cases. | |
| 33 | |
| 6628 | 34 * Improve sqp. |
| 2330 | 35 |
| 36 * Fix CollocWt to handle Laguerre polynomials. Make it easy to | |
| 37 extend it to other polynomial types. | |
| 38 | |
| 39 * Add optional arguments to colloc so that it's not restricted to | |
| 40 Legendre polynomials. | |
| 41 | |
| 42 * Fix eig to also be able to solve the generalized eigenvalue | |
| 43 problem, and to solve for eigenvalues and eigenvectors without | |
| 44 performing a balancing step first. | |
| 45 | |
| 46 * Move rand, eye, xpow, xdiv, etc., functions to the matrix classes. | |
| 47 | |
| 2477 | 48 * Use octave_allocator for memory management in Array classes once |
| 49 g++ supports static member templates. | |
| 50 | |
| 2330 | 51 * Improve design of ODE, DAE, classes. |
| 52 | |
| 3141 | 53 * Make QR more memory efficient for large matrices when not all the |
| 54 columns of Q are required (apparently this is not handled by the | |
| 55 lapack code yet). | |
| 56 | |
| 5164 | 57 --------------- |
| 58 Sparse Matrices: | |
| 59 --------------- | |
| 60 | |
| 5610 | 61 * Improve QR factorization functions, using idea based on CSPARSE |
| 62 cs_dmsol.m | |
| 5164 | 63 |
| 5610 | 64 * Implement fourth argument to the sprand and sprandn, and addition |
| 65 arguments to sprandsym that the leading brand implements. | |
| 5164 | 66 |
| 5282 | 67 * Sparse logical indexing in idx_vector class so that something like |
| 68 "a=sprandn(1e6,1e6,1e-6); a(a<1) = 0" won't cause a memory overflow. | |
| 5164 | 69 |
| 8921 | 70 * Make spalloc (r, c, n) actually create an empty sparse with n |
| 71 non-zero elements? This allows something like | |
| 5164 | 72 |
| 8921 | 73 sm = spalloc (r, c, n) |
| 5164 | 74 for j=1:c |
| 75 for i=1:r | |
| 76 tmp = foo (i,j); | |
| 77 if (tmp != 0.) | |
| 78 sm (i,j) = tmp; | |
| 79 endif | |
| 80 endfor | |
| 81 endfor | |
| 82 | |
|
9031
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
83 actually make sense. Otherwise the above will cause massive amounts |
| 5164 | 84 of memory reallocation. |
| 85 | |
| 86 The fact is that this doesn't make sense in any case as the assign | |
|
9031
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
87 function makes another copy of the sparse matrix. So although spalloc |
|
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
88 might easily be made to have the correct behavior, the first assign |
| 8921 | 89 will cause the matrix to be resized! There seems to be no simple |
| 5164 | 90 way to treat this but a complete rewrite of the sparse assignment |
| 91 functions... | |
| 92 | |
| 93 * Other missing Functions | |
| 94 - symmmd Superseded by symamd | |
| 95 - colmmd Superseded by colamd | |
| 96 - cholinc | |
| 6627 | 97 - bicg Can this be taken from octave-forge? |
| 5164 | 98 - cgs |
| 99 - gmres | |
| 100 - lsqr | |
| 101 - minres | |
| 102 - qmr | |
| 103 - symmlq | |
| 104 | |
| 2330 | 105 ------- |
| 106 Strings: | |
| 107 ------- | |
| 108 | |
| 2789 | 109 * Improve performance of string functions, particularly for |
| 110 searching and replacing. | |
| 111 | |
| 2330 | 112 * Make find work for strings. |
| 113 | |
| 2378 | 114 * Consider making octave_print_internal() print some sort of text |
| 115 representation for unprintable characters instead of sending them | |
| 116 directly to the terminal. (But don't do this for fprintf!) | |
| 117 | |
| 118 * Consider changing the default value of `string_fill_char' from SPC | |
| 119 to NUL. | |
| 120 | |
| 2330 | 121 ---------------- |
| 122 Other Data Types: | |
| 123 ---------------- | |
| 124 | |
| 125 * Template functions for mixed-type ops. | |
| 126 | |
|
7789
82be108cc558
First attempt at single precision tyeps
David Bateman <dbateman@free.fr>
parents:
7787
diff
changeset
|
127 * Convert other functions for use with the floating point type |
| 8921 | 128 including quad, dasrt, daspk, etc. |
|
7789
82be108cc558
First attempt at single precision tyeps
David Bateman <dbateman@free.fr>
parents:
7787
diff
changeset
|
129 |
| 2330 | 130 ------------ |
| 131 Input/Output: | |
| 132 ------------ | |
| 133 | |
| 134 * Make fread and fwrite work for complex data. Iostreams based | |
| 135 versions of these functions would also be nice, and if you are | |
| 136 working on them, it would be good to support other size | |
| 137 specifications (integer*2, etc.). | |
| 138 | |
| 139 * Move some pr-output stuff to liboctave. | |
| 140 | |
| 141 * Make the cutoff point for changing to packed storage a | |
| 142 user-preference variable with default value 8192. | |
| 143 | |
| 144 * Complain if there is not enough disk space available (I think | |
| 145 there is simply not enough error checking in the code that handles | |
| 146 writing data). | |
| 147 | |
| 148 * Make it possible to tie arbitrary input and output streams | |
| 149 together, similar to the way iostreams can be tied together. | |
| 150 | |
| 151 ----------- | |
| 152 Interpreter: | |
| 153 ----------- | |
| 154 | |
| 3162 | 155 * Allow customization of the debug prompt. |
| 156 | |
| 2601 | 157 * Fix the parser so that |
| 158 | |
| 3081 | 159 if (expr) 'this is a string' end |
| 160 | |
| 161 is parsed as IF expr STRING END. | |
| 162 | |
| 6628 | 163 * Clean up functions in input.cc that handle user input (there |
| 164 currently seems to be some unnecessary duplication of code and it | |
| 165 seems overly complex). | |
| 2330 | 166 |
| 167 * Consider allowing an arbitrary property list to be attached to any | |
| 168 variable. This could be a more general way to handle the help | |
| 169 string that can currently be added with `document'. | |
| 170 | |
| 171 * Allow more command line options to be accessible as built-in | |
| 172 variables (--echo-commands, etc.). | |
| 173 | |
| 174 * Make the interpreter run faster. | |
| 175 | |
| 4325 | 176 * Allow arbitrary lower bounds for array indexing. |
| 2330 | 177 |
| 4325 | 178 * Improve performance of recursive function calls. |
| 2330 | 179 |
| 180 * Improve the way ignore_function_time_stamp works to allow | |
| 3167 | 181 selecting by individual directories or functions. |
| 2330 | 182 |
| 183 * Add a command-line option to tell Octave to just do syntax | |
| 184 checking and not execute statements. | |
| 185 | |
| 186 * Clean up symtab and variable stuff. | |
| 187 | |
| 188 * Input stream class for parser files -- must manage buffers for | |
| 189 flex and context for global variable settings. | |
| 190 | |
| 3162 | 191 * make parser do more semantic checking, continue after errors when |
| 192 compiling functions, etc. | |
| 193 | |
| 2330 | 194 * Make LEXICAL_ERROR have a value that is the error message for |
| 195 parse_error() to print? | |
| 196 | |
| 197 * Add a run-time alias mechanism that would allow things like | |
| 198 | |
| 199 alias fun function_with_a_very_long_name | |
| 200 | |
| 201 so that `function_with_a_very_long_name' could be invoked as | |
| 202 `fun'. | |
| 203 | |
| 204 * Allow local changes to variables to be written more compactly than | |
| 205 is currently possible with unwind_protect. For example, | |
| 206 | |
| 207 function f () | |
| 208 local prefer_column_vectors = something; | |
| 209 ... | |
| 210 endfunction | |
| 211 | |
| 212 would be equivalent to | |
| 213 | |
| 214 function f () | |
| 3758 | 215 save_prefer_column_vectors = prefer_column_vectors; |
| 2330 | 216 unwind_protect |
| 217 prefer_column_vectors = something; | |
| 218 ... | |
| 219 unwind_protect_cleanup | |
| 220 prefer_column_vectors = save_prefer_column_vectors; | |
| 221 end_unwind_protect | |
| 222 endfunction | |
| 223 | |
| 224 * Fix all function files to check for bogus inputs (wrong number or | |
| 225 types of input arguments, wrong number of output arguments). | |
| 226 | |
| 227 * Handle options for built-in functions more consistently. | |
| 228 | |
| 229 * Too much time is spent allocating and freeing memory. What can be | |
| 230 done to improve performance? | |
| 231 | |
| 232 * Error output from Fortran code is ugly. Something should be done to | |
| 233 make it look better. | |
| 234 | |
| 235 * It would be nice if output from the Fortran routines could be | |
| 236 passed through the pager. | |
| 237 | |
| 238 * Attempt to recognize common subexpressions in the parser. | |
| 239 | |
| 240 * Consider making it possible to specify an empty matrix with a | |
| 241 syntax like [](e1, e2). Of course at least one of the expressions | |
| 242 must be zero... | |
| 243 | |
| 244 * Is Matrix::fortran_vec() really necessary? | |
| 2862 | 245 |
| 2746 | 246 * Rewrite whos and the symbol_record_info class. Write a built-in |
| 247 function that gives all the basic information, then write who and | |
| 248 whos as M-files. | |
| 2439 | 249 |
| 2799 | 250 * On systems that support matherr(), make it possible for users to |
| 251 enable the printing of warning messages. | |
| 252 | |
| 2862 | 253 * Make it possible to mark variables and functions as read-only. |
| 254 | |
| 3092 | 255 * Make it possible to write a function that gets a reference to a |
| 256 matrix in memory and change one or more elements without | |
| 257 generating a second copy of the data. | |
| 258 | |
| 5228 | 259 * Use nanosleep instead of usleep if it is available? Apparently |
| 260 nanosleep is to be preferred over usleep on Solaris systems. | |
| 261 | |
| 9213 | 262 -------- |
| 263 Graphics: | |
| 264 -------- | |
| 265 | |
| 266 * Correctly handle case where DISPLAY is unset. Provide | |
| 267 --no-window-system or --nodisplay (?) option. Provide | |
| 268 --display=DISPLAY option? How will this work with gnuplot (i.e., | |
| 269 how do we know whether gnuplot requires an X display to display | |
| 270 graphics)? | |
| 271 | |
| 2330 | 272 ------- |
| 273 History: | |
| 274 ------- | |
| 275 | |
| 276 * Add an option to allow saving input from script files in the | |
| 277 history list. | |
| 278 | |
| 3092 | 279 * The history command should accept two numeric arguments to |
| 280 indicate a range of history entries to display, save or read. | |
| 281 | |
| 5026 | 282 * Avoid writing the history file if the history list has not |
| 283 changed. | |
| 284 | |
| 285 * Avoid permission errors if the history file cannot be opened for | |
| 286 writing. | |
| 287 | |
| 2330 | 288 * Fix history problems -- core dump if multiple processes are |
| 289 writing to the same history file? | |
| 290 | |
| 291 ------------------------------ | |
| 292 Configuration and Installation: | |
| 293 ------------------------------ | |
| 294 | |
| 8921 | 295 * Split config.h into a part for Octave-specific configuration |
| 296 things (this part can be installed) and the generic HAVE_X type of | |
| 297 configure information that should not be installed. | |
| 2473 | 298 |
| 2330 | 299 * Makefile changes: |
| 300 -- eliminate for loops | |
| 301 -- define shell commands or eliminate them | |
| 302 -- consolidate targets | |
| 303 | |
| 304 * Make it possible to configure so that installed binaries and | |
| 305 shared libraries are stripped. | |
| 306 | |
| 3069 | 307 * Create a docs-only distribution? |
| 308 | |
| 2330 | 309 ------------------------------ |
| 310 Documentation and On-Line Help: | |
| 311 ------------------------------ | |
| 312 | |
| 313 * Document new features. | |
| 314 | |
| 315 * Improve the Texinfo Documentation for the interpreter. It would | |
| 316 be useful to have lots more examples, to not have so many forward | |
| 317 references, and to not have very many simple lists of functions. | |
| 318 | |
| 319 * The docs should mention something about efficiency and that using | |
| 320 array operations is almost always a good idea for speed. | |
| 321 | |
| 322 * Texinfo documentation for the C++ classes. | |
| 323 | |
| 324 * Make index entries more consistent to improve behavior of `help -i'. | |
| 325 | |
| 326 * Make `help -i' try to find a whole word match first. | |
| 327 | |
| 3130 | 328 * Clean up help stuff. |
| 329 | |
| 2330 | 330 * Demo files. |
| 331 | |
| 332 ----- | |
| 333 Tests: | |
| 334 ----- | |
| 335 | |
| 336 * Improved set of tests: | |
| 337 | |
| 338 -- Tests for various functions. Would be nice to have a test file | |
| 339 corresponding to every function. | |
| 340 | |
| 341 -- Tests for element by element operators: | |
| 342 + - .* ./ .\ .^ | & < <= == >= > != ! | |
| 343 | |
| 344 -- Tests for boolean operators: && || | |
| 345 | |
| 346 -- Tests for other operators: * / \ ' .' | |
| 347 | |
| 348 -- Tests from bug reports. | |
| 349 | |
| 350 -- Tests for indexed assignment. Need to consider the following: | |
| 351 o fortran-style indexing | |
| 352 o zero-one indexing | |
| 353 o assignment of empty matrix as well as values | |
| 354 o resizing | |
| 355 | |
| 356 * Tests for all internal functions. | |
| 357 | |
| 358 ----------- | |
| 359 Programming: | |
| 360 ----------- | |
| 361 | |
| 8921 | 362 * C++ namespace for Octave library functions. |
| 363 | |
| 2475 | 364 * Better error messages for missing operators? |
| 365 | |
| 366 * Eliminate duplicate enums in pt-exp.cc, pt-const.cc, and ov.cc. | |
| 367 | |
| 368 * Handle octave_print_internal() stuff at the liboctave level. Then | |
| 369 the octave_value classes could just call on the print() methods | |
| 370 for the underlying classes. | |
| 371 | |
| 372 * As much as possible, eliminate explicit checks for the types of | |
| 373 octave_value objects so that user-defined types will automatically | |
| 374 do the right thing in more cases. | |
| 375 | |
| 2330 | 376 * Only include config.h in files that actually need it, instead of |
| 377 including it in every .cc file. Unfortunately, this might not be | |
| 378 so easy to figure out. | |
| 379 | |
| 380 * GNU coding standards: | |
| 381 | |
| 382 -- Add a `Makefile' target to the Makefiles. | |
| 383 -- Comments on #else and #endif preprocessor commands. | |
| 384 -- Change error message format to match standards everywhere. | |
| 385 | |
| 386 * Eliminate more global variables. | |
| 387 | |
| 388 * Move procstream to liboctave. | |
| 389 | |
| 390 * Use references and classes in more places. | |
| 391 | |
| 392 * Share more code among the various *_options functions. | |
| 393 | |
| 394 ------------- | |
| 395 Miscellaneous: | |
| 396 ------------- | |
| 397 | |
| 398 * Implement some functions for interprocess communication: bind, | |
| 399 accept, connect, gethostbyname, etc. | |
| 400 | |
| 2454 | 401 * The installation process should also install octave.el. This |
| 402 needs to detect the appropriate Emacs binary to use to | |
| 403 byte-compile the .el file. Following GNU Emacs philosophy, | |
| 404 installation would be into $(prefix)/share/emacs/site-lisp by | |
| 405 default, but it should be selectable. | |
| 406 | |
| 2330 | 407 * The ability to transparently handle very large files: |
| 408 | |
| 409 Juhana K Kouhia <kouhia@nic.funet.fi> wrote: | |
| 410 | |
| 411 If I have a one-dimensional signal data with the size 400 | |
| 412 Mbytes, then what are my choices to operate with it: | |
| 413 | |
| 414 * I have to split the data | |
| 415 * Octave has a virtual memory on its own and I don't have to | |
| 416 worry about the splitting. | |
| 417 | |
| 418 If I split the data, then my easily programmed processing | |
| 419 programs will become hard to program. | |
| 420 | |
| 421 If possible, I would like to have the virtual memory system in | |
|
9031
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
422 Octave i.e., the all big files, the user see as one big array or |
| 2330 | 423 such. There could be several user selectable models to do the |
| 424 virtual memory depending on what kind of data the user have (1d, | |
| 425 2d) and in what order they are processed (stream or random | |
| 426 access). | |
| 427 | |
| 428 Perhaps this can be done entirely with a library of M-files. | |
| 429 | |
| 3136 | 430 * An interface to gdb. |
| 431 | |
| 432 Michael Smolsky <fnsiguc@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il> wrote: | |
| 433 | |
| 434 I was thinking about a tool, which could be very useful for me | |
|
9031
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
435 in my numerical simulation work. It is an interconnection |
|
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
436 between gdb and octave. We are often managing very large arrays |
| 3136 | 437 of data in our fortran or c codes, which might be studied with |
|
9031
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
438 the help of octave at the algorithm development stages. Assume |
| 3136 | 439 you're coding, say, wave equation. And want to debug the |
|
9031
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
440 code. It would be great to pick some array from the memory of |
|
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
441 the code you're developing, fft it and see the image as a |
|
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
442 log-log plot of the spectral density. I'm facing similar |
| 3136 | 443 problems now. To avoid high c-development cost, I develop in |
|
9031
1052a66078cf
Documentation cleanup of top-level Octave directory (READMEs, INSTALL)
Rik <rdrider0-list@yahoo.com>
parents:
8921
diff
changeset
|
444 matlab/octave, and then rewrite into c. It might be so much |
| 3136 | 445 easier, if I could off-load a c array right from the debugger |
| 446 into octave, study it, and, perhaps, change some [many] values | |
| 447 with a convenient matlab/octave syntax, similar to | |
| 448 a(:,50:250)=zeros(100,200), and then store it back into the | |
| 449 memory of my c code. | |
| 450 | |
| 2789 | 451 * Add a definition to lgrind so that it supports Octave. |
| 452 (See http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/support/lgrind/ for more | |
| 453 information about lgrind.) | |
| 454 | |
| 2330 | 455 ------ |
| 456 Always: | |
| 457 ------ | |
| 458 | |
| 459 * Squash bugs. | |
| 460 | |
| 461 --30-- | |
| 3162 | 462 </pre> |
| 463 </html> |