Solicited Suggestions for ZOOM Products

The following suggestions by users have been made this past month, mostly
in response to a question of "what potential ZOOM products could help you 
and your group." 

1. Symmetric model for matrix classes

	Stichelbaut, Adams, others -- 

	The package accommodates "models", that is, matrices with special
	properties that you can take advantage of both for speed and for
	semantic reasons.  For example, if M is symmetric, when I say 
	M(5,3) = 4; x = M(3, 5) I shuld get x=4.

	This is being done.

2. Error logger

	Sexton, but others have also suggested this as a good idea.

	The entire hard part is to determine what abilities and semantics are
	needed, and providing them independant of system.
	
3. TraceBack

	Kennedy, also ZOOM members when developing Exceptions package

	There ought to be a standard way to obtain a string containing the
	stack trace info -- e.g.,
			SpaceVector::divide(double)  SpaceVector.cc line 48
	   called from  SiliTrak::computeSlope()     Innertrack.cc  line 53
	   called from  D0framework()		     D0froamwork.cc line 20
	   called from  main()			     D0main.cc      line 10
	This should be availbe to the user.  Once we have this, both the
	Exceptions and the ErrorLogger package (if that is done) can take
	advantage of it.

	People have found how to do this on most of the needed platforms.
	The work is in gathering that info, integrating it, filling in any 
	missing supported platforms, and SUPPORTING this as platform operating
	systems change.  

4. PlaneVectors

	Two people from CDF re-iterated their early request for this.

	Planned as part of PhysicsVectors; not elaborate.


5. A robust numerical minimization package (a la MINUIT)

	Paterno, and others

	There is fear that MINUIT is going away and that there will be no 
	freely available substitute.  A quick-ish wrapper around some public 
	domain package (CERN's MINUIT is the natural one) is wanted.

6. A robust multidimensional numerical integration package.

	Paterno

	It depends what is needed.  For small numbers of dimensions and 
	functions without poles or very thin very tall maxima, we can probably
	find or make such a package.  For the hard cases, this is too difficult.

The following are not strictly suggestions for a product received by run II 
users in the last month, but are related:

7. Documentation package

	An E831 member demonstrated what they have, and it is a fairly good
	browser/documenter system.  They seem to be willing to put it in a
	form taking C++ along with Fortran, if that is wanted.  
	
8. Error-guarded quantities

	Possibly integrated with PhysicsVectors and LinearAlgebra, the idea is
	to account for variances and correlation matrices.  The trick is to 
	track dependencies on fundamental independant gaussian errors; thus
	compbining quatities that are based on different errors is not the
	same as combining quatities based on the same underlying errors.
	Of course, the carrying along of the epsilons is hidden tfrom the user.

9. q-q-product kit at back end of generators, 

	R. Kutschke

	This is an idea to substitude actual computations for decay tables.
	It was mentioned to Marraffino.

10. General desires for support for non-supported platforms

	Amber, Dan, David, and others