dolfin team mailing list archive

[Johan Jansson <jjan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Dec 06, 2006 at 10:51:57PM +0100, Anders Logg wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 05, 2006 at 10:05:02PM +0100, Johan Jansson wrote:
> 
> > The way I see modules is that they shouldn't exist at all. A module
> > today is some equation- or domain-specific functions and
> > algorithms. But the goal of FEniCS is that we shouldn't need
> > equation-specific methods and algorithms.
> > [...]
> 
> This is true, but we will always need the modules/solvers.
> 
> A solver is something that specifies a number of fixed parameters,
> like which equation to solve, and allows a user to specify some
> others.
> 
> This allows a user to solve say Navier-Stokes with a given right-hand
> side on a given domain (and some other parameters).
> 
> If we didn't have the Navier-Stokes solver, one would need to at least
> write down Navier-Stokes and we can't expect everyone to know that
> (not to mention writing down the weak formulation including
> stabilization etc).
> 
> So, in the end the modules could be very very short but they will still
> be there.
> 
> /Anders

Yes, but if an entity only consists of written-down equations +
coefficients, then let's call it an equation? And if an entity
consists of equation-specific low-level functionality, then let's call
it a module?

Otherwise we have that a module consists of "stuff", which can be
anything. And it becomes more difficult to quantify the progress of
FEniCS, since everything looks the same, regardless if it's
generalized/automated or not.

  Johan