Neural nets

[Jose R. Valverde]

The Applications www page states that neural network routines would
be a nice add on. So, here's a meagre contribution from my experience
with NNs:

	There are lots of free packages. Rather than coding our own
set of routines it may make sense to use one of these.

	As for NN routines, I'd advise using XNN. It's a GPL environment
to build, test and train neural networks. It's got a nice GUI, supports
almost all types of networks, and generates the C code routines to be
used in the compiled program. Much more effective (IMHO) than coding a
library. Other packages exist, but XNN is a nice and complete one.

	I would like to propose that XNN be used in EMBOSS (say, bundled
together) and the NN library be removed from the TO DO list. To get it:
	
	ftp://ftp.ii.uib.no/pub/neureka/

	For the curious, a starting pointer to many NNs is at

http://www.emsl.pnl.gov:2080/proj/neuron/neural/systems/shareware.html

from there you may also follow links to freeware for fuzzy systems and
genetic algorithms, but I have less experience with these.

				j