dolfin team mailing list archive

[Johan Hake <hake@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 23 March 2009 09:51:00 Martin Sandve Alnæs wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Johan Hake <hake@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Hello!
> >
> > Now that we have removed the read/write Function from/to file in the c++
> > interface we have to change the python interface too. I haven't done this
> > yet.
> >
> > But before I do this I wonder if we _should_ add some logic in the python
> > interface that allow the functionality we previously had, i.e., writing
> > and reading Function to and from a file directly?
> >
> > We could perhaps extend the <</>> operator in the c++ wrapper so an xml
> > file with the vector, mesh and the FiniteElement signature will be saved
> > in. Then in python we can jit compile the FE, when reading the file. We
> > should probably have one constructor taking only the xml file but also
> > one taking an optional mesh argument, preventing the problems with
> > duplications of meshes.
> >
> > Would this be desirable? I know Ola have made some thoughts about this.
>
> Only for toy programs. We still need to share the function spaces
> between functions.

While I do see your point, I cannot see why this should prevent us from having 
this functionality. The main argument of removing this functionality from the 
beginning was not the non-sharing of FunctionSpaces but the difficulties of 
using a precompiled library of finite_elements and dofmaps.

A duplication of finite elements and dofmaps is of course a drawback. 
Programmers who want full sharing can do this by using the vector to/from 
file interface.

I will probably not use this feature, but others might.

Johan