ZOOM Assessment with respect to
Jan 1997 Contents and Priorities

The following items were determined to be of the highest priority ...

(I-1) CONTAINER CLASSES

STL, or perhaps tools.h or both.
Possibly investigate OSE, LEDA, SafeSTL, or other wrappers/tools.

The standard has excellent classes. With some notable exceptions, our supported compilers provide these classes. Thus, people have adequate container classes.

Wrappers and enhancements, including tools.h, were investigated. Although they are nice, they do not provide the extensions that would make us willing to endorse them.

The meeting pointed out a need for "Guide to usage" Several decent books (E.G STROUSTRUP) now have this info.

(I-2) LINEAR ALGEBRA

A target menu of types of desired functionallity was presented by Bob Jacobsen ...
The ZOOM LinearAlgebra package is in place. It addresses the identified needs.

However, there are some specialized features we still need to add, e.g. symmetric matrix model. The framework is clearly capable of accomodating these.

The package has not been used extensively enough that we can quantify typical performance, or robustness.

(I-2a) 3-VECTOR and LORENTZ-VECTOR MANIPULATION

This is closely related to, but not identical to, a subset of the Linear Algebra module. The two projects should be done in concert, but additional physics concepts are present for Euclidean vectors (Euler angles) and Lorentz vectors (relativistic kinematics) that might not be present in a pure-math matrix package.
The ZOOM PhysicsVectors package, recently released in beta version, covers all functionallity in the CLHEP vector package, and has quite a few relative andvantages.

It needs completion (LorentzTransformation) but we can recommend its use in the mean time.