ITP libctl
I intend to package libctl, a program by Steven G. Johnson at MIT that
enables scientific simulations to support flexible control files. It
is a prerequisite for packaging MIT Photonic-Bands (mpb), the recently
announced software package to compute definite-frequency eigenstates
of Maxwell's equations in periodic dielectric structures.
A draft control file follows.
- Jim Van Zandt
Source: libctl
Section: devel
Priority: optional
Maintainer: James R. Van Zandt <jrv@vanzandt.mv.com>
Standards-Version: 3.0.1
Package: libctl-dev
Architecture: any
Depends: libc6-dev
Description: parse flexible control files for scientific simulations
libctl is a Guile-based library supporting flexible control files in
scientific simulations.
.
Scientific software for performing large computations is typically
managed using textual control files that specify the parameters of the
computation. Historically, these control files have typically
consisted of long, inflexible collections of numbers whose meaning and
format is hard-coded into the program. With libctl, we make it easy
for programmers to support a greatly superior control file structure,
and with less effort than was required for traditional input formats.
.
Despite its power, libctl is designed to be easy to use. A basic user
only sees a convenient file format...with a programming language to
back it up if her needs become more complex. For the programmer, all
headaches associated with reading input files are lifted--once an
abstract specification is supplied, and interaction with the user is
handled automatically.
.
For more information, see http://ab-initio.mit.edu/libctl/.
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