Raymond Toy wrote:
> David Ronis wrote:
>>
>> As to CVS write permission, thanks but no thanks. When it comes to lisp
>> I'm at best an extreme-novice, and worse, here, I haven't a clue what
>> colnew is supposed to do, never mind what it really needs to build.
>>
> colnew is a numerical boundary value ode solver.
>> If colnew/colnew.system is really not needed, then it should be removed
>> from Makefile.am.
>>
>>
> Because I never install maxima I never see these problems. In hindsight,
> the colnew stuff probably should have been on a branch. I might still do
> that, just to keep the head branch clean. When I added it, I thought I'd
> have some time but creating the actual interface for maxima is going to
> take longer than I thought.
>
> Ray
Since i am the one who bugged Raymond Toy to introduce colnew into maxima,
maybe the following reference may help in explaining what does colnew and
how it is called from the outside:
http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/dspace/bitstream/1892/6207/1/b14461420.pdf
This is a thesis at Simon Frazer University. In particular at page 40 is a
driver showing how to call colsys (or colnew, this is the same, basically).
Colnew itself is explained starting from page 33.
The main strength of colnew is that it can solve any sort of "boundary
value" and spectral problems, it is not limited by two "boundary values" at
the end of the interval as is traditional, they may be an arbitrary number
of points scattered in the interval, as long as you have as many unknowns
as equations, of course. And while it needs a "guess" to converge to the
solution, once you have a solution you can use it as a guess for a slightly
different problem, this is the "continuation method". Hence it is very
powerful and flexible.
--
Michel Talon