Hi,
I wanted to post that a while ago, better late than never, I guess.
> Dear PDL Users-
>
> In an effort to gauge the progess of PDL development in functionality
> and usability, I would invite you to reply to me or to list with a quick
> message about your PDL use:
>
> - How long have you used PDL?
several years, 2.4.3 was released then.
> - What PDL version do you use?
at the moment, 2.007
> - Best thing(s) about PDL
Most important, it's perl, which I happen to use since the 90s. A piddle
is a perl referebce ! (Almost) everything you can do with perl, you can
do with a piddle. So integration into other applications is easy.
threading!
Niceslice!
active and very helpful mailing list!
> - Worst thing(s) about PDL
PDL::Complex - or rather a lack of native complex data types, and
standardised interface to complex numbers.
Far less important but still, the barf on multielement piddles! It
breaks the expected if ($var) { ...} perl behaviour. This is an issue
whenever you use existing perl code with piddles. I thought about it and
maybe a per-piddle $piddle->cond_behave() call added? The default value
and undef would mean the current behaviour, the other values would be,
for example 'any','all','defined'. Then these calls are used in the
conditional expression. Discussion should go to a separate thread, I guess.
> - I would use PDL more (or at all) if only ...
... I could find the time to look into PP.
honestly, hard to say, I already do most stuff in PDL.
> - Any suggestions for PDL development?
many ;)
A lot of work has gone into making PDL easy to install. Keep that going!
The graphics side took huge steps forward with bindings to Prima and
Gnuplot. BTW., what do you get if you install PDL but have no graphics
package installed? I'd like to see a big fat warning whenever that is
the case, because nothing would turn people away faster than not being
able to say "plot $x;" and get something on the screen, I guess.
Better documentation, especially some kind of index to look for keywords
related to modules/functions is always an issue. There has been a lot of
improvements, especially the book is a real bonus. As a side note, when
I click on the PDL Book link (side panel on pdl.perl.org), I come to the
page first steps with PDL. Only at the very bottom of the page, there is
a link to the sf book! Please provide a link right at the top!
Support more data types, especially complex.
Make PDL as perlish as possible from the view of other non-PDL modules.
Ideally, PDL behaves just like another class, and a piddle is just yet
another reference to an object. Recent discussions on use base PDL; and
Storable should give you an idea what I mean.
Support for meaningful dimensions (names, units, spacing). Rather than
having to remember and keeping track of what your piddle looks like, ie.
the mes one can end after using several mv(), reshape(), etc., calling
sumover('x','t') would be cool. I have been working on that and some
stuff is already there. I plan to release a module some time in the
future, but have currently too much other stuff to do. Discussion should
go to a separate thread, I guess.
To summarise, I like PDL a lot and use it a lot.
Ingo
>
> The goal is to improve the PDL experience and to encourage a
> broader PDL user community.
>
> Thanks much,
> Chris Marshall (PDL-2.007 release manager)
>
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>
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