USDA ARS

IPW Design Goals

Six broad design goals have guided the implementation of IPW [Frew 1990]:

simplicity
IPW should be easy to understand and use effectively.

extensibility
IPW should be easy to adapt to applications unforeseen in its original design.

portability
IPW programs and data should be usable in any standard UNIX and C environments.

uniqueness
IPW should complement, rather than duplicate, existing capabilities of the host environments.

leveraging UNIX
IPW should take advantage of the particular strengths of UNIX (pipelines, hierarchical file system, programmable command language, etc.)

an open system
The IPW source code should be freely available.


IPW documentation / Last revised 20 May 2009 / IPW web site