[Gsll-devel] Introducing "Grid Structured Data"

[Liam Healy]

I don't think there's any doubt we all want one all-singing
all-dancing interface that provides array utility for everything in CL
that needs it.  The reason there are two starts is because we both
started in parallel without the being aware of the other's work.  The
reason that GSD only got as far as it did was because I had addressed
the complaints on this mailing list and elsewhere (including me) and I
had no more time.  I do not think of it as complete.

So the real work here is going through both sets of code and figuring
out how to unify them.  I think all the help we can get would be
welcome; I'm certainly willing to work toward the goal.

To get the ball rolling, start with a feature at a user's level that
you need; I mean by this some very specific thing that you've coded in
CL already and found to be clumsy.  Then see how each package
implements it or would implement it.  Then post to the list your
findings, together with your example if possible, to start a
discussion.  Anyone can do this; I don't think there's a need to
restrict to a "third party"; we lack a first party at the moment.  By
picking single feature(s) and working from there, we will
incrementally get to the goal we all seek.  If we try to do everything
at once or at the most abstract level, we're likely not going to get
there as quickly.

Liam

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 11:50 AM, A.J. Rossini <blindglobe at gmail.com> wrote:
> My cursory look suggests a fair amount of similarity as well, and I
> find attractive features in both -- but want just one API!
>
> A reasonable proposal, from my highly biased perspective, would be a
> 3rd party merge of the better components of each.
>
> (I've spent time with the xarray interface, which is the source of my
> biases -- it mostly works for what I want to do, despite being a
> simplification of the lisp-matrix access approach -- which isn't bad,
> there are some lisp-matrix functionality which is strictly edge-case
> relevant...
>