linux linear programming model

[Alex LeDonne]

On Nov 19, 2007 4:56 PM, Matt Graham <danceswithcrows at usa.net> wrote:
> After a long battle with technology, Alex LeDonne wrote:
> > On Nov 19, 2007 4:17 PM, betty <nicepenguin at webcanine.com> wrote:
> >> anyone know a linear programming  model (for feed ingredients) that is
> >> avail as an open source program??? I do my own dog diet blending and it is
> >> pretty tiring to use gnumeric (or else i don't know all the features;
> >>
> >> I looked on line but most (all) of the pet food programs are keeping it
> >> close to the vest since it is their bread and butter (sorry about the
> >> mixed metaphors :(  )
>
> That's a horse of a different feather, and once you let it out of the barn
> door, it snowballs and has a life of its own sort of like a computer virus.
>
> > What do you mean by "linear programming model"?
> > What are the inputs, and what is the output you're looking for?
>
> I believe betty is looking for something like this (from the BSD fortune
> file):
> ----------------
> Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods.  Instruct
> the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
> minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content.  The
> results are that one should eat each day:
>
>         1/2 chicken
>         1 egg
>         1 glass of skim milk
>         27 heads of lettuce.
>                 -- Rev. Adrian Melott
> ----------------
>
> ...except one that works properly, and one geared for dogs instead of people.
> This can get very complex depending on the number of lines you have to deal
> with and which factors you're trying to min/max.  I did this a very long time
> ago in junior high, but have forgotten everything except the basic concepts.
> Searching for "linear programming" on freshmeat doesn't give you anything
> that works with gnumeric or OOO, but does turn up a C package.  This is
> probably not what you want.  Can't see anything in OOO's help either.  Dang.
>
> --
>    "Dreams?  Best leave dreams to those that can afford them."
>    --Aunt Cordelia, _Wizard and Glass_, Stephen King
> There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
>

Ah, OK. If that's correct:

I'll suggest starting with a search for "linear algebra" rather than
linear programming.

I know LAPACK is the standard for linear algebra, and there are
bunches of bindings (like lapack++ for c++). SciPy wraps BLAS &
LAPACK. Of course, Prolog is optimized for this sort of thing - it's a
language for constraint-based programming. And I'll bet there's a way
to do this in Octave.

But I doubt that there's anything canned and ready to use.

-Alex