Greetings,
I do think an ifeffit-dev list and/or wiki area is a fine idea. I don't know how many others would be interested in this, but it might allow for more open development, and keep the ifeffit mailing list more for usage questions. Any other opinions on this?
I second the idea. A -dev list would also help avoid confusion. I can see that people might get really confused if one set of people are talking about some software in development and other people are talking about the program that people are using.
Mauro Rovezzi wrote:
For these reasons I would like to know your point of view on the idea to find a standard in the creation of Ifeffit applications in order to permit the interested community to contribute/share in the programming effort. Practically speaking, if someone would like to implement a new functionality based on the Ifeffit library which directives should follow to integrate the existing applications?
I think that there are several possibilities but I think it would best to look at where the codebase is going. The development of tdl and demeter look like good solutions. The question is how can other people connect into these things. For example, a plugin like structure might be used. Someone adding a new function could for example write a plugin to do something like: 1. ask ifeffit for data and other needed information 2. do some tranform/filter/magic on data 3. return data to ifeffit Other people could use plugin by calling it from within ifeffit. You can do this now with the wrappers but it appears to me that this might be easier to do with tdl and/or demeter as these things seem better designed to do just that. Perhaps Matt or Bruce would like to comment further. Or people could work more directly with tdl and demeter. In the end I think that a modular approach would be best. It could be called the XAFS-toolbox or something. ;-)
Well, now that question (TDL?? Are you nuts??) is a fine and fair question, and one I've been asked before and in fact ask myself on a regular basis.
I also kind of wondered as I am am normally sceptical of creating a new language. However, one advantage of creating a mini language is that you can tailor it to the specific application. This way you can get the language to 'do what I mean' in a given situation. Cheers, Adam -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Dr. M. Adam Webb HASYLAB at DESY Notkestrasse 85 D-22607 Hamburg Germany Phone: +49 40 8998-1994, Fax: +49 40 8998-2787 E-mail: adam.webb@desy.de -----------------------------------------------------------