[Sasview-users] Please help test SasView 4.0 beta

[Paul Butler]

Dear SasView user,



You are receiving this email as a subscriber to the SasView user list and
we wanted to let you know that version 4.0 is finally close to being
released!



While 4.0 has a number of bug fixes and feature requests added, the primary
change is a complete rewrite of the way the fitting models are
incorporated.  The most important change simplifies the interface to
SasView so that all built-in models can be used directly as custom
plugins.  This means, for example, that existing models can be altered for
a specific purpose with relative ease.  It also means that models that
require C for speed are now supported --- in fact without the need for you
to install a separate compiler!  Just write your properly written and named
C code in the plugins directory alongside the python module that calls it.
Version 4.0 also makes all the infrastructure  for built-in models, such as
polydispersity functions, available to custom models.



As part of this major refactoring, we also have taken advantage of the fact
that all modern computers including laptops have a certain amount of GPU
(graphical processor unit) power.  As long as you have the OpenCL driver
installed SasView will default to utilizing your GPUs when needed.  OpenCl
comes installed by default with Macs and many - but not all - PCs.
Preliminary tests show that model-fitting, say, cylinders can get a 10-fold
speedup.  Should GPUs not be available on your machine, SasView will still
utilize multiple CPUs.  Finally, the model documentation has been
extensively reviewed, checked, and edited.



With such a massive restructuring there were bound to be “unexpected
consequences” that came to light… and they did!  The development team now
believes that except for the tickets currently listed under Milestone 4.0.0
at http://trac.sasview.org/report/3 the beta 1 pre-release is robust enough
for use in real applications.  We are planning to have the full release
available by the end of September.  In the meantime, we would very much
appreciate any feedback from your experience, and particularly bugs you
find we may have missed.



Thanks and we hope you enjoy the new version.



The SasView Development Team
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