<h1><br></h1>All,<br><br> I'd to call your attention to the OpenGrADS Project, a complementary effort to add extensions and new interfaces to GrADS. OpenGrADS is <b>not</b> an alternative GrADS distribution, but rather a project designed to provide "add-ons" to the main GrADS application developed and maintained by the GrADS core team at COLA. Like GrADS, all OpenGrADS software is developed under an open source model, mostly GPL. You can find out more OpenGrADS at our home page and wiki:<br>
<br> <a href="http://opengrads.org">http://opengrads.org</a> <br> <a href="http://opengrads.org/wiki">http://opengrads.org/wiki</a><br><br>New developers are always welcome. In particular we are seeking volunteers for developing interfaces to Ruby and PHP similar to our Perl and Python interfaces. Java programmers are also welcome for helping out extending our Jython interface, or to develop a pure Java interface not involving Jython. And the Perl/Python interfaces are far for complete. If you have solid programming skills in these areas and would like to volunteer your time contact the developers by posting a message at our open-discussion forum:<br>
<br> <a href="http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=547756">http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=547756</a><br><br>The Project Overview from our home page follows.<br><br> Cheers!<br><br> Arlindo<br>
<br><h1>OpenGrADS Project Overview </h1>
The power of GrADS stems from its easy of use, speed and availability
on a wide number of platforms. Traditionally, user extensions have
been possible by means of the GrADS scripting language, and user
defined functions. The OpenGrADS Project aims at improving GrADS
extensibility by
<ul><li> developing a framework for high performance <i>user defined
commands</i> and <i>user defined functions</i>, allowing users to
add their own dynamically linked plugins;
</li><li> developing interfaces to modern scripting languages such as Perl and
Python, as as well as to scientific tools such as IDL, Octave and
Matlab, so that more powerful GrADS based applications can be
developed and integrated into other existing community efforts;
</li><li> establishing a central location for collaborative development of
packages for GrADS, coordinating the development of extensions in
critical areas;
</li><li> providing a central repository of such extensions for the end-user.
</li></ul>
The <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/opengrads/">
OpenGrADS Project</a> intends to complement the GrADS development
going on at <a href="http://grads.iges.org/grads/">
COLA/IGES</a>, although from time to time patches to COLA
releases will be necessary to enable the latest OpenGrADS
extensions.
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Arlindo da Silva<br><a href="mailto:dasilva@alum.mit.edu">dasilva@alum.mit.edu</a>