Re: Long-term design goals for ePiX

[Andrew Hwang <ahwang@radius.holycross.edu>]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Andrew Sterian wrote:

> Andrew Hwang wrote:
>
> >     Making ePiX into a stand-alone binary is more effort than I am willing
> >     to invest personally, though it might make a good student project.
>
> One thing you might consider is exposing the ePiX internals via a
> Python (or some such) interface so that it can be scripted rather than
> written in C code. That solves the Windows problem, too (the Windows
> user downloads the Python distribution and the ePiX pre-compiled DLL).
>
To clarify, do you mean having users' input files be scripts (in Python,
say) and writing ePiX's picture object routines as library objects that
can be called from a script?

> I'm already starting to develop a small library of useful functions
> (stem plots, square waves, etc.) and I'd like to link it in as a true
> library using the 'epix' program...
>
> I'm thinking:
>
>            epix -Imyinclude -Lmylibs thefile.c
>
This is a nice idea! Three implementations come to mind:
1. Command line options (as you suggested)
2. A global config file (e.g. ~/.epixrc), or a specified config file
  (epix -f ./config thefile.c)
3. An environment variable (EPIX_CFLAGS, say)

as well as
4. Some combination of 1--3

Any feeling about which would be easiest to use/least likely to cause
problems in the future?

> In my experience, the college or university is most interested in not
> being exposed to liability, rather than profiting off copyright.

I hope you're right, but fear the worst. :)

The College has in many ways been reluctant to encourage the use of Free
software, to put it mildly. However, our new president is trained as a
computer scientist, and is well aware of the FSM, so one may hope for a
gradual trickle-down of tolerance, if not enlightenment. Of course, use of
Free software and supporting the development of Free software are not the
same thing, but I was told by the Dean's office that having faculty
publish software here (under *any* license) has no good precedent. Passing
them the BSD disclaimer is a good idea, all the same.

--Andy

Andrew D. Hwang			ahwang@mathcs.holycross.edu
Department of Math and CS	http://mathcs.holycross.edu/~ahwang
College of the Holy Cross	(508) 793-2458 (Office: 320 Swords)
Worcester, MA, 01610-2395	(508) 793-3530 (fax)