External tools and libraries in RegMAS

Selected: none

Rejected ideas:

• swarm - Old, odd and low-performance language (C-Object), decreasing trend. + large user community,
• repast - Much fewer user base, lack documentation (tutorials, how-to, API), java: still not best in performance and difficulties in linking with C libraries + more “modern approach”, used by many computational economists, GIS module, XML capability by default in java, multiplatform;

Selected: Qt

• (+) Include in one framework xml and threads/processes API, easy to run the same code in Linux/Windows/Mac, lot of doc, tutorials and community;
  
• (-) non-standard make (qmake), GPL, one-company project,

Rejected ideas:

• wxWidgets - Miss some cross-platform libraries other than GUI (xml, threads/processes), no good ide under windows. + LGPL, simple to use, “my first love”, community drive project, regmas already implement a simple GUI in wxWidgets;
• GTK - it's a little bit a mess + wide usage, LGPL, community drive project.

Selected: Embedded in QT

Rejected ideas:

• xerces-c - Seems to have windows binaryes only for MS Visual studio. An other requirement. + Olready implementing and working in regmas;
• libxml2 - Same as for the GTK.. it seems a little bit a mess for an unexperienced user.

Selected: GLPK

• (+) Already proved to work well in both Windows/Linux, fast, integer capabbility;
• (-) GPL.

Rejected ideas:

• lp_solve - Untested + LGPL.
• COIN-OR - Messy, yet don't understood which is the MIP solver. + They may exist unlinear solvers too.

Selected: direct parsing/writing of GRASS / ArcInfo ascii text grid files.

• (+) Not requiring further libraries
• (-) Only I/O, not GIS library, only plain ascii grid support

Rejected ideas:

• GDAL - Not needed.. only I/O, not a real GIS library, not proved on Windows

Maybe:

• SAGA GIS - Untested, project not so large as GDAL + Should be able to perform spacial analisis.. a real GIS library!

Selected: Umbrello UML

• (+) Tested, easy to use, works fine and lot of features (including imports)
• (-) On some Linux distros it crashed importing very large projects

Note: give a try also to Bouml

Selected: Doxygen

• (+) Tested, easy to use, works fine and lot of features.
• (-) ??