The ABINIT Users Mailing List ( CLOSED )

[Xavier Gonze <gonze@pcpm.ucl.ac.be>]

Dear Forum members,

Some thoughts, about different mails posted recently ...
The mailing list is quite active. It is an invaluable tool for the  
project.
Still, not all mails are answered.

Some of you post again their mail.
In past times, Mikami-san suggested to read
http://www.abinit.org/about/?text=../Infos/FAQ#NoResponce
But please, read also his latest "production", for the
Summer School at Santa Barbara :
http://www.abinit.org/summer_05/Mikami_ABINIT05.pdf ,
especially, the very nice, still humorous, last page of this  
presentation ;-) .
And, of course, always follow the ABINIT Netiquette
http://www.abinit.org/community/?text=netiquette .

Sometimes, the adequate developer prefers not to answer on a mail,  
but would like to examine
the problem. Still, this developer is not available immediately for  
that task.
So, there is no wonder that  the mail is not answered.
Then, later, the developer comes back to the problem, and fix it.  
Usually, the
bug fix is announced in the release notes, and the developer might  
not answer
the initial post, just to save time (answering mails diverts time  
from real development !)

At present, several of the problems mentioned in the last month or so,
have been solved in the forthcoming v4.6.5 . This latter is due next  
week, likely.
However, some subjects have not been tackled by the developers, to my  
knowledge.
In particular, the optic utility was mentioned several times on the  
mailing list, but nothing
has been changed for optic in v4.6.5. Sorry for this. Please, do not  
send again mails with the
same content. Still, additional information on optic might be  
welcome... but might not generate
an answer as well ...

Concerning mail asking for help (not reporting bugs) : please,  
consider the extensive documentation
that is available inside the package, and also the fact that you have  
access to the sources !
Many developers or experienced users might read your mail, and think  
"well, this
guy has all the answers to his question somewhere in the package". My  
suggestion
is again to read Mikami-san latest production:
http://www.abinit.org/summer_05/Mikami_ABINIT05.pdf . Then, consider  
also reading
the ABINIT sources ! Finding the places where an input variable is  
used is not difficult, try :
grep input_variable_name */*.F90 , where input_variable_name is the  
name of your
input variable. Then, read the selected files ...

Xavier