The Art of Computational Science ACS Toolbox

These tools were developed within the context of the Maya project, but they are presented here as a standalone package. In order to use these tools, the user does not need to know anything about the Maya project (this is our goal; the full decoupling from Maya will probably take place in 2007).

Currently, the ACS toolbox contains the following six tool modules:

• Acsdoc: The ACS document generation system
• Clop: a command line option parser
• Code management: libraries, versions, and compatibility
• ACS data format: self-describing data files
• Figures: virtual plotting
• Visualization: acsvis

We provide the following entry points, each roughly a factor ten longer than the previous one:

• Name:  Toolbox
• Title:  The ACS Toolbox: A Collection of Project-Independent Tools
• Description:  The ACS Toolbox is a collection of tools that have beeen developed in specific projects under the ACS umbrella, but that can be used in a much more general way for many other projects as well. While the development of each tool is described within the project where it was created, we present the toolbox here as a stand-alone Ruby code package. The toolbox is modular, and most tools can be used in stand-alone mode; where there is a dependence of one tool on another, that dependence is clearly documented.

• Summary (1 page)
• Introduction (10 pages)
• Primer (100 pages)