OK, so how best to proceed?
First off, thanks for being willing to accommodate this request. I know it's painful to contemplate the prospect of rejiggering a library, especially one this extensive.
My gut feeling is that the "tools" part is the least well developed, and as you rightly say there are sections that could be later developed into fuller libraries in their own right (I've already had feedback from people interested in doing just this incidentally).
How about if we re-label the tools section as an internal implementation detail - which is basically what it is - it can then serve as a placeholder or "seeder-library" for future work. A bit like what fusion was to spirit, or the few current special functions we have are to quaternions/ octonions.
I agree - tools are probably of the least general interest as well, so fewer potential users will miss them anyway...
Which leaves the question of how best to review the two main thrusts of the library: the special functions and distributions. Would it work if we roughly divided the review time into two halves with each half notionally devoted to one section or the other? There's bound to be some overlap but it might help to focus our collective minds better :-)
I expect that the discussion will be somewhat intertwined, so it may run in parallel whether that's what we want or not. I will endeavor to encourage reviewers to be clear on which parts of the library they have focused and to submit separate reviews for each part, but I think the informal discussion can meander some.
Of course if one half is accepted but not the other we've in a lot of bother 'cos they're too entwined to separate, but I'm not going to think about that right now!
I'm not sure that it is necessary to separate them; if, for example, the distributions portion was accepted, in my mind that would just mean that the special functions would be considered an implementation detail so Boost wouldn't be making any promises, implicit or explicit, to support that interface in the future. Naturally, I hope both parts will get accepted...
How does this sound? If we go this way then how much time should each section need do you think?
I guess, in fairness, if we're going to split into two semi-separate reviews, each should be allocated a week. My inclination would be to run the review in parallel, but for two weeks instead of one... Review wizard comments? Matthias ---------------------------------------------------------------- Matthias Schabel, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology Utah Center for Advanced Imaging Research 729 Arapeen Drive Salt Lake City, UT 84108 801-587-9413 (work) 801-585-3592 (fax) 801-706-5760 (cell) 801-484-0811 (home) matthias dot schabel at hsc dot utah dot edu ----------------------------------------------------------------