Re: Freemat Development

[Hamid 2C]

Have you checked McVM
(http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/mclab/mcvm_mcjit.html) which is also a
MATLAB clone? It uses LLVM to do JIT compilation to the extent I know.

Hamid

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 9:03 PM, Samit Basu <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jacob (et al),
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Jacob Dawid <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Samit,
>> maybe we can find a common interface for the requirements a software for
>> numerical mathematics must have to serve us all.
>
> Sure.  I have recently begun to wonder about the need for a dedicated
> GUI at all.
> There was at least one project to build a GUI for octave based on eclipse,
> but it seems to have been abandoned.
>
>> I am not quite sure under
>> which license you distribute freemat in your own products and what the
>> expectations of your user base are, but surely we can agree on working to
>> fulfil all our needs equally. Coding together means to not run two competing
>> products, so in the end work that has been done will result in better
>> software for the user.
>
> I distribute FreeMat under GPLv2.  When FreeMat ships in a product,
> the manufacturer
> must adhere to the conditions of the GPL (of course).
>
> As far as I can tell, my user base wants more than anything else to
> 1. Run their MATLAB scripts without modification under FreeMat.
> 2. Achieve similar performance to what they have grown accustomed to.
> 3. Track trends in numerical computation.
>
> In a sense, these three principles have guided the design and
> implementation of FreeMat
> from the beginning.  FreeMat 4 focuses heavily on MATLAB
> compatibility, necessitating
> a refactoring of the underlying array class (who thought you would
> need complex int8s?).
> We still get requests for missing functions, but these have become
> less frequent over the
> years.
>
> For performance, we have been highly focused on the JIT (Just In Time 
> compiler)
> to accelerate loops.  The first generation JIT was released in 4.0,
> and worked OK.  The
> second generation JIT is ready to release in 4.1 and covers much, much
> more of the code.
>
> For the 3rd one, the emphasis going forward is on GPUs.  Perhaps
> GPU-acceleration of
> numerical codes expressed in interpreted languages would be a logical
> place to collaborate?
>
>> We have people doing lots of dedicated work, like testing, answering
>> questions in IRC, doing packaging, caring for nightly builds, bugfixing and
>> translating into various languages. Also, I was not implicitly saying that
>> you have to abandon your project. We already took a look over your code to
>> check if you have implemented some functionality that we still lack,
>> especially a terminal emulation for Windows.
>
> You are welcome to use anything you want, of course (within the terms
> of the GPL).
> QTTerm.cpp in libs/libXP is the basis of our cross-platform terminal
> -- it is not
> a real terminal emulator in the sense of VT-100, or such.  I was also unable 
> to
> find a terminal widget that was cross platform, and thus wrote QTTerm.
>
> There is no doubt that Octave has tremendous global reach.  It is an excellent
> tool, and I have talked to many who love to use it.
>
>> If applicable, I would always opt in to integrate work that has been done
>> already. I invite you to participate on our mailing list
>> address@hidden
>
> At the suggestion of a few folks, we have an octave-compatibility mode
> in FreeMat 4.1, which
> will allow FreeMat to parse and execute octave-syntax scripts
> natively.  As for further
> proposals to integrate the projects, I am open to suggestions.
>
>> This way you will reach more people that hopefully can answer you more
>> specific questions.
>> Best Regards,
>> Jacob
>
> Keep up the excellent work!
>
> Regards,
> Samit
>
>> 2011/8/23 Samit Basu <address@hidden>
>>>
>>> Hello Jacob,
>>>
>>> Your project looks very interesting.  Octave will definitely benefit
>>> from having a user-friendly interface.
>>> I am not exactly sure how we would collaborate, but I am open to
>>> suggestions.  I have a fairly
>>> dedicated user base for FreeMat, and use it daily in my work.  It is
>>> also included in several products
>>> that I have designed, so I cannot readily abandon it. ;)
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Samit
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Jacob Dawid <address@hidden>
>>> wrote:
>>> > Dear Mr. Basu,
>>> > I am an octave developer and saw that you are working on a similar
>>> > program,
>>> > called freemat. A few months ago I begun developing a GUI for octave
>>> > using
>>> > Qt, which is aimed to be platform-independent (it's currently not
>>> > running on
>>> > Windows, but on GNU/Linux and MacOSX). I did not start from scratch,
>>> > instead
>>> > I mixed several projects from different places. Also, I implemented an
>>> > IRC
>>> > client, incorporated code from Konsole and use QScintilla as a file
>>> > editor.
>>> > We have translated the UI into spanish, ukrainian, russian, german and
>>> > portuguese already, more to come. I have uploaded a screenshot of the
>>> > latest
>>> > development version here:
>>> > http://www7.pic-upload.de/23.08.11/nmwr94ved6hn.png
>>> > Since I saw your profile
>>> > ( http://www.ece.illinois.edu/alumni/awards/yaaa/2008-Basu.html ) I am
>>> > not
>>> > in the position making offers, being a regular student only, but
>>> > actually we
>>> > are working on similar projects. If you joined us we could all benefit,
>>> > starting with sharing code so we do not duplicate efforts, giving you
>>> > the
>>> > opportunity to work for a huge user base and us having a true
>>> > professional
>>> > in our team.
>>> > If you have questions concerning this, feel free to join us in #octave
>>> > in
>>> > FreeNode or just mail back. I am gladly awaiting your answer!
>>> > Greetings,
>>> > Jacob Dawid
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > Software Development == Church Development
>>> > Step 1. Build it.
>>> > Step 2. Pray.
>>> >
>>> > Whitespace - the most ink saving programming language:
>>> > http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/index.php .
>>> >
>>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Software Development == Church Development
>> Step 1. Build it.
>> Step 2. Pray.
>>
>> Whitespace - the most ink saving programming language:
>> http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/index.php .
>>
>>
>



-- 
Hamid A. Toussi
http://hamid2c.github.com/