[racket-dev] Cross-Collection Documentation - a PLaneT Philosophy Question (or Two)

From: Doug Williams (m.douglas.williams at gmail.com)
Date: Thu Sep 22 09:54:57 EDT 2011

I have three PLaneT packages that together implement a knowledge-based
simulation capability. I did this because each of the packages is useful in
its own right. The science collection provides the basic mathematical
framework - I use it separately in many analysis applications. The
simulation collection provides a hybrid discrete-event and continuous
simulation engine. The inference collection provides a hybrid
forward-chaining and backward-chaining inference engine.

Although they were developed together and I often use them together, they
are separate collections. As such, they are documented separately and the
examples in each are specific to that collection. Now, I have written a good
example knowledge-based simulation that cuts across all of them and I am
planning on developing documentation on how to use the packages together.
Should I package this up as a PLaneT package itself although it doesn't add
any new functionality? Is there a better way to distribute something like
this - more like an application note than an applicaton? It seems to be the
only way to do it in the current framework. [It will be in the Schematics
repository on Sourceforge. But I pretty much just use that as my development
repository.]

Also, when using the simulation collection one (almost) always uses the
random distributions from the science collection. In my development branch,
I have now just re-exported the random distributions in the science
collection from the simulation collection. Thus, I only have the one PLaneT
require in user code instead of two. [I don't want to move the random
distributions to the simulation collection because they really are part of
the mathematical framework and logically belong in the science collection.]
Is this going to bite me later if someone needs other elements of the
science collection and does a separate require - i.e., will the names
conflict even though they are (ultimately) the same objects?

Doug
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