sparse objects

Dear Friends,

	About a year ago I asked around in this list and the OM lists 
about sparse matrices and vectors, which are central to my field of
research. I also (thanks to generous support from WRI) attended the
MathML conference in Urbana. The answer I got was basically that MathML
was very strongly focused on K12 and that I shouldn't hold my breath. 

	Well, it turns out that our community is now sufficiently
organized that it looks like our standard communication format is actually
going to become reality. Of course we would love to be able to use a
MathML structure for representing our sparse objects. We would at least
like to convey our structures in a way that MathML-aware applications
would understand them.

	I searched the MathML 2.0 recommendation and found no reference to
sparse objects. But apparently there are new features in Mathematica 4.0
to deal with sparse objects. So that gives me some more hope. 

	Can someone be so kind as to in a few words describe what is going
on in this area? Maybe someone from Wolfram? I would really appreciate it!

Thanks!
Leo.

========================================================================
Leonardo B. Lopes                                       leo@iems.nwu.edu 
Ph.D. Student                                              (847)491-8470
IEMS - Northwestern University              http://www.iems.nwu.edu/~leo

Received on Thursday, 11 October 2001 22:16:23 UTC