Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2010 16:41:12 +0000 From: Anton Shterenlikht <mexas@bristol.ac.uk> To: Benedict Reuschling <bcr@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: new man page for GAMS? Message-ID: <20101105164111.GB66352@mech-cluster241.men.bris.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <4CD42B55.70004@FreeBSD.org> References: <20101105153958.GA54105@mech-cluster241.men.bris.ac.uk> <4CD42B55.70004@FreeBSD.org>
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On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 05:05:41PM +0100, Benedict Reuschling wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > Hi > > > > I'd like to write a man page for GAMS. > > For those not familiar with GAMS, it > > stands for Guide to Available Mathematical Software, > > and is a standard classification system of maths > > software - http://gams.nist.gov/ > > > > Is it a good idea to just convert GAMS index, e.g.: > > http://netlib.org/slatec/gams > > into a GAMS man page? > > > > It is not directly related to the base OS, but > > affects lots of ports under ports/math, and > > probably some under other categories. > > > > thanks > > anton > > > > Hello Anton, > > Not all users of FreeBSD use these math-ports and therefore it is not a > "must-have" part of the base system. So I think a man page is not such a > good idea. > > Nevertheless, for people doing mathematical work with FreeBSD it might > be a good idea to have an article explaining what kind of software is > available on FreeBSD and some of the terminology (GAMS index) mentioned > in the links you provided. > > Are all the packages mentioned in the first link available as ports? If > not, perhaps some of them can be ported to FreeBSD as a result. > > If you need help with such an article, I can help you with the SGML and > formatting. > > Regards > > Benedict Reuschling yes, that's what I thought. I'm preparing a port of Slatec, which contains several helpful plain text documentation files: http://netlib.org/slatec/gams http://netlib.org/slatec/toc http://netlib.org/slatec/guide http://netlib.org/slatec/list http://netlib.org/slatec/tree1 So what I'll try to do for now is to create man pages from some of those, for example I'll make something like "slatec-gams" man page. Regarding the article, yes, I'm interested, but it seems like a major undertaking. Just from a quick glance at http://gams.nist.gov/ there are lots of maths software not ported. Some probably will never be ported. Some software listed is proprietary, some obsolete, etc. So, I'll probably need more help than just SGML. I'll probably need somebody with good knowledge of maths as well. Then, of course, it could be an incremental process. Perhaps once we have a first draft, we can send it ports@ for comments, etc. thanks anton -- Anton Shterenlikht Room 2.6, Queen's Building Mech Eng Dept Bristol University University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK Tel: +44 (0)117 331 5944 Fax: +44 (0)117 929 4423
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