Request for Review: R, perl-Jcode, perl-OLE-Storage_Lite, perl-Spreadsheet-WriteExcel, perl-Unicode-Map, QuantLib, udunits

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

All packages described can be found here:
http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/

R is a free software environment for for statistical computing and
graphics. It is widely used in higher education. It is similar to S, so
similar, that most S code has been (or can be) ported to R.
R is very modular, like perl or python. The base R package provides the
R runtime environment and some core required modules. 
http://www.r-project.org/

There are a lot of R modules out there, and I intend on packaging most
of them. The end goal is to enable Fedora Core as a platform for things
like Bioconductor (http://www.bioconductor.org/), and make it more
friendly for University use.

I'm going to break the packages up into chunks for review and
submission, since no one wants to review several hundred packages in one
go. These packages are some of the missing dependencies of R and
friends.

====

R: 
URL: http://www.r-project.org/
SRPM: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/R-2.0.1-8.src.rpm
SPEC: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/R.spec

A language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.
R is similar to the award-winning S system, which was developed at
Bell Laboratories by John Chambers et al. It provides a wide
variety of statistical and graphical techniques (linear and
nonlinear modelling, statistical tests, time series analysis,
classification, clustering, ...).

R is designed as a true computer language with control-flow
constructions for iteration and alternation, and it allows users to
add additional functionality by defining new functions. For
computationally intensive tasks, C, C++ and Fortran code can be linked
and called at run time.

QuantLib:
URL: http://www.quantlib.org
SRPM: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/QuantLib-0.3.8-2.src.rpm
SPEC: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/QuantLib.spec

QuantLib is a free/open-source library for modeling, trading, and risk
management in real-life.

perl-Jcode:
URL: http://www.cpan.org
SRPM: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/perl-Jcode-0.88-1.src.rpm
SPEC: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/perl-Jcode.spec

Jcode is a Perl extension interface to convert Japanese text.

perl-OLE-Storage_Lite:
URL: http://www.cpan.org
SRPM:http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/perl-OLE-Storage_Lite-0.14-1.src.rpm
SPEC:http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/perl-OLE-Storage_Lite.spec

Simple Class for OLE document interface.

perl-Spreadsheet-WriteExcel:
URL: http://www.cpan.org
SRPM:http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/perl-Spreadsheet-WriteExcel-2.12-1.src.rpm
SPEC:http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/perl-Spreadsheet-WriteExcel.spec

The Spreadsheet::WriteExcel module can be used to create a cross-
platform Excel binary file. Multiple worksheets can be added to a
workbook and formatting can be applied to cells. Text, numbers,
formulas, hyperlinks and images can be written to the cells.

The Excel file produced by this module is compatible with 97,
2000, 2002 and 2003.

The module will work on the majority of Windows, UNIX and
Macintosh platforms. Generated files are also compatible with the
spreadsheet applications Gnumeric and OpenOffice.org.

This module cannot be used to read an Excel file. See
Spreadsheet::ParseExcel or look at the main documentation for some
suggestions. This module cannot be uses to write to an existing
Excel file.

perl-Unicode-Map:
URL: http://www.cpan.org
SRPM: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/perl-Unicode-Map-0.112-1.src.rpm
SPEC: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/perl-Unicode-Map.spec

This module converts strings from and to 2-byte Unicode UCS2 format. 
All mappings happen via 2 byte UTF16 encodings, not via 1 byte UTF8
encoding. To convert between UTF8 and UTF16 use Unicode::String.

For historical reasons this module coexists with Unicode::Map8.
Please use Unicode::Map8 unless you need to care for >1 byte character
sets, e.g. chinese GB2312. Anyway, if you stick to the basic 
functionality (see documentation) you can use both modules equivalently.

udunits:
URL: http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/udunits/index.html
SRPM: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/udunits-1.12.4-2.src.rpm
SPEC: http://www.auroralinux.org/people/spot/R/udunits.spec

The Unidata units library, udunits, supports conversion of unit specifications 
between formatted and binary forms, arithmetic manipulation of unit 
specifications, and conversion of values between compatible scales of 
measurement. A unit is the amount by which a physical quantity is measured. For 
example:

                  Physical Quantity   Possible Unit
                  _________________   _____________
                        time              weeks
                      distance         centimeters
                        power             watts

This utility works interactively and has two modes. In one mode, both an input 
and output unit specification are given, causing the utility to print the 
conversion between them. In the other mode, only an input unit specification is 
given. This causes the utility to print the definition -- in standard units -- 
of the input unit.

====

Thanks in advance,

~spot
-- 
Tom "spot" Callaway: Red Hat Sales Engineer || GPG Fingerprint: 93054260
Fedora Extras Steering Committee Member (RPM Standards and Practices)
Aurora Linux Project Leader: http://auroralinux.org
Lemurs, llamas, and sparcs, oh my!