INTERFACE CoordMinimizer;

(*
  Multivariate function minimization by coordinatewise
  univariate minimization.
  
  Created 95/07/17 by J.Stolfi
*)

IMPORT Minimizer, UniMin;

TYPE
  T <: Public;
    (*
      An optimizer based on coordinatewise univariate minimization.
      
      The "minimize" method will repeatedly apply a few iterations of
      some univariate optimization method to each of the N arguments in
      turn. After each N+1 coordinate optimizations, will do one "diagonal"
      univariate optimization on the line connecting the output of the first
      and last steps. 
      
      The convergence is theoretically slow, but the method
      is simple and fast.
      
      The default univariate optimizer is a BrentUniMin.T.
      
      The "minimize" method does not uses the gradient information
      supplied by "eval", unless the default univariate minimizer is
      replaced (with "setUniMin") by one that uses derivative
      information.

    *)

  Public = Minimizer.T OBJECT
    METHODS
        
      setUniMin(u: UniMin.T): T;
        (*
          Changes the univariate optimizer to be used. *)
        
      setBudget(n: CARDINAL): T;
        (*
          Specifies the number of function evaluations
          allowed when minimizing each coordinate. *)
        
    END;
    
END CoordMinimizer.