Re: [ROOT] How to Call CERNLIB routines from the interpreter

From: Christian Holm Christensen (cholm@hehi03.nbi.dk)
Date: Tue Dec 19 2000 - 14:23:56 MET


Hi ROOT'ers,

On Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:25:44 +0100 (MET)
"Jacek M. Holeczek" <holeczek@us.edu.pl> wrote
concerning ": Re: [ROOT] How to Call CERNLIB routines from the interpreter":
> > However I do not  think the idea to keep the Fortran environment
> > just to be able to call  

I think Valery is right here. Fortran is a ghost that we'd probably
like to do away with ASAP.

> That's right. It would be better to implement numerical methods in C++,
> but in the current situation it is much more cost effective to use existing
> code, even if it comes from fortran.

I'd like to direct your attention to the "GNU Scientific Library"
(GSL) developed, among others, by people from Los Alamos. This is a
very general library with many many features aimed for scientific
use. It's written in ANSI C, and is very portable. Also, it's released
under GPL, making it truely OpenSource. No wrappers in C++ exist, but
as far as I can tell, it should be fairly easy to do. For a more
complete description of the features in GSL, please look at 

	 http://sources.redhat.com/gsl/

This avenue, I believe, is a better one then trying to use old Fortran
libraries. Also, one could probably port the GSL to native C++/ROOT
code, should one want that. However, a set of C++/ROOT wrappers is
probably more viable solution, since the GSL team will provide the
updates, etc. rather then one having to port those each time the GSL
library is changed. 

In fact, I see no major problem in ROOT using (OpenSource) third party
software, like GSL, ClHEP, Blitz++, GEANT4 (is it OpenSource?), SL++,
and so on. However, using commercial third party software, like NAG-C,
Microsoft TTF fonts, Objectivity, should be depreciated, or should be
destributed as contributed third party pacakges. 

Here's some pointers:

  GSL:     http://sources.redhat.com/gsl/
  ClHEP:   http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/asd/lhc++/clhep/
  Blitz++: http://oonumerics.org/blitz/index.html
  SL++:	   http://ldeniau.home.cern.ch/ldeniau/html/sl++.html

And ofcourse:
  
  SAL:	   http://SAL.KachinaTech.COM/index.shtml

Ayway, that's my two pennies worth. 

Yours, 

Christian  -----------------------------------------------------------
Holm Christensen                             Phone:  (+45) 35 35 96 91 
  Sankt Hansgade 23, 1. th.                  Office: (+45) 353  25 305 
  DK-2200 Copenhagen N                       Web:    www.nbi.dk/~cholm    
  Denmark                                    Email:       cholm@nbi.dk



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