Things we may do next:

Generally speaking, the items below should be considered 'available for motivated volunteers who want to make a difference'. The simpler the inclusion into Quantian, the higher the probability that it will appear.

The following need Debian packages first:

MPI Toolbox for Octave (MPITB) at http://atc.ugr.es/javier-bin/mpitb (suggested by Julio R Banga)

openBUGS, the open source implementation of the BUGS (Bayesian Inference via Gibbs Sampling) system for Monte Carlo Markov Chain estimation -- maybe as a binary package.

open Beagle, a versatile environment for evolutionary computation, would be nice. Needs Debian packages.

The ASPECT (Adaptable Simulation Product Exploration and Control Toolkit) would be nice, but someone needs to build Debian packages for it.

There may be some nuggets in the pile at Fortranlib.com. Golddiggers welcome.

Dstool which has/had version 2 in Debian, would be nice if version 3 at U of Minnesota could get packaged.

Cactus has been suggested by Marco.

ePix suggested by Enric M. Calvo.

cb2Bib suggested by Marco Caliari.

Molekel and mprime suggested by Claudiu Tanaselia.

GENtle, suggested by Magnus Manske

ParaView, an open-source, parallel visualization application, suggested by Marco Caliari

GDL -- GNU Data Language, a GPL'ed IDL implementation, suggested by John Hornstein

calchep, comphep, FeynDiagram (a C++ library to design Feynman Diagrams) all suggested by Joao Esteves

FreeHDL, SystemC libs and compiler all suggested by Simon de Feber

The following are available and may be included "soon":

Add a texmacs-fonts package which needs local rebuilding. Volunteers for build scripts / simplification?

CDK for which some packages (libcdk-java-doc libcdk-java, cdk, libcdk-java-dirbrowser) are here but they appear dated (Suggested by Andy Liaw).

dialign, kalign and probcons: bioinformatic packages for multiple-sequence alignments that are now in Debian, suggested by Charles Plessy

GHDL, GTKWave, IVI, suggested by Simon de Feber

Nicer and sleaker presentation / documentation / experience:

We need to learn how Simply Mepis gets the desktop so 'right', and borrow as much as we can. Any volunteers?

Start collecting items for a FAQ

Start editing 'discipline-specific pages'

Shall we build quantian-* metapackages similar to what the Debian junior and Debian med projects do?

Quantian-specific html pages upon startup would be nice too. Maybe some of the pdf papers?

doc-central package, and a link to http://localhost/dc, with thanks to Graham's Survivor Guide

Things we already did (in reverse chronological order):

All added on 0.7.9.2:

NIH's ImageJ (suggested by Fred Govedich)

Weka (but we could still add Grid Weka), both suggested by Bob McPherson

ORSA, from Frank S. Thomas (suggested by Pasquale Tricarico)

Praat, from Praat.org, suggested by Rafael Laboissiere

wxmaxima, suggested by George Gesslein

inkscape, suggested by Ed Pegg

xscreensaver and xscreensaver-gl, suggested by Ed Pegg

All added on 0.7.9.1:

gerbv, suggested by Chris Steigies

The KDE application kst, a real-time data stream visualizer

octaviz, recently packages by Rafael, in Debian experimental right now -- but depends on libvtk4 (>= 4.4.2) which removes mayavi and python-vtk

mathomatic suggested by George Gesslein II.

scigraphica, suggested by Bill Tihen.

latex-beamer, suggested by Enric M. Calvo

rubber (a latex et al wrapper, seen on r-help, in Debian)

python-visual, from vpython, now in Debian (suggested by Gary Pajer).

opencv, suggested by Aaron Hoover

cimg-dev, suggested by Sam Hocevar

PyVTK, suggested by Greg P.

GNU polyxmass, suggested by Filippo Rusconi

mdbtools, suggested by Anne York

Support for Gromacs

Gromacs is a versatile package to perform molecular dynamics, i.e. simulate the Newtonian equations of motion for systems with hundreds to millions of particles.

Done in 0.6.9.3:

We should reconsider iraf and friends from ftp://iraf.noao.edu/contrib/debian/; Need to check how free/non-free this is.

Maybe add clustalw and friends.

Done in 0.6.9.2:

LabPlot at http://labplot.sourceforge.net -- with Debian package at http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/%7Ea0306501/LabPlot/labplot.html (Marco). Turns out that labplot is compiled against an old libmagick++ library, and rebuilding it under unstable gets it newer KDE libraries we don't quite want yet. Next time ... especially as it is now a native Debian package!

Update these Cernlib package to get them all in sync: cernlib-core geant321-data geant321-doc kxterm libeurodec1 libeurodec1-dev libphotos202 libphotos202-dev paw paw++ paw-common paw-demos Thanks to Kevin McCarthy for checking this.

Matplotlib which need to get into .deb form first. Now at http://anakonda.altervista.org/debian/packages/ (thanks, Marco)

subversion, subversion-tools, cvs2svn, tla-load-packages, tla, tla-buildpackage, tla-tools, tla-load-dirs (suggested by Tony R.)

kseg suggested by Ed Pegg.

Done in 0.6.9.1:

the ddd debugger (suggested by Renato Vitolo)

slicot, packaged by Marco

All done in 0.5.9.4:

Alliance VHDL, a complete set of free CAD tools and portable libraries for VLSI design which includes a VHDL compiler and simulator, logic synthesis tools, and automatic place and route tools, from http://www-asim.lip6.fr/recherche/alliance (suggested by 'Joe'; has no Debian packages AFAICT but an rpm; converted to .deb using alien(1))

pcb, to complement GNU geda (Chris Steigies)

add gnumeric back in (Marcel Neitsch)

prepare md5sums to enable 'checkcd' option (Marco)

suppress 'modules.conf' newer by touch(1)'ing (Marco)

postgres and pl/r (Joe Conway)

add lyx back in (Marco)

use Marco's minirt24 with 'also boot from ext3' patch

use Marco's boot splash screen replacement logo.16 (on alioth)

setiathome, tkseti, xplanet, xplanet-images, saoimage, gpsim, gnucap, oregano, icom, xcircuit, vipec, xsmc-calc, transcalc (Gopal Narayanan)

xd3d [http://www.cmap.polytechnique.fr/~jouve/xd3d/index.php], suggested and packaged by Marco

QtiPlot at http://soft.proindependent.com/qtiplot.html, with Debian package there (Marco)

Misc

geda (Chris Steigies), lam4-dev, atlas3-base-dev (Marco Caliari), scalapack, petsc, debian-med, screensavers (Ed Pegg) ... were added in 0.5.9.3

Distributed computing for R

I have built local packages of rpvm, rpmi and snow. With some help from Kai Hendry and Elijah Wright, sprng was compiled into a library to so that rsprng could complete the bundle. Added in Quantian 0.5.9.1.

pytables

A hierarchical database package designed to efficiently manage very large amounts of data. Suggested by Francesc Alted, packages at Sourceforge and in Debian Added in Quantian 0.5.9.1.

Axiom

Another large computer algebra system, suggested by Tim Daly Added in Quantian 0.5.9.1.

CERNlib

A vast array of packages (paw, geant, libcern, ...). Should take care of the ROOT request as much as possible. Added in Quantian 0.5.9.1.

Prettyfication

Eventually, custom background images for Quantian would be nice. Anybody familiar with, say, gimp who wants to contribute files, send me mail! Added in Quantian 0.5.9.1.

Preview-latex

A wysiwyg mode for emacsen, suggested by David Kastrup. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.6.

More suggestions

ftnchek, lam4 and lam4-dev or mpich and libmpich1.0, prosper and pdfscreen for LaTeX presentation, maybe kdvi and kghostview instead of xdvi and gv (we would need aliases, though), pvm. All already packaged. Suggested by Marco Caliari. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.5 and 0.4.9.6.

Add the Lua language

Suggested by Luis Carvalho, and already in Debian. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.6.

Add plotmtv

Requested by Marco Caliari. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.3.

Add mpqc (Massively parallel Quantum Chemistry)

Suggested by Boris; a small-ish .deb is in unstable, but it depends on the larger libsc4 and suggestes mqpc-support which is also big. We'll see what we can do. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.2.

Add xppaut (X phase plane plus auto), a solver for nonlinear equations

Suggested by Balbir Thomas; a .deb is in unstable, and it depends on nothing new so this should be easy. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.2.

Add A+, an APL dialect initially developed by Morgan Stanley

Good suggestion from Alex. Skomorokhiv. There are a few Debian packages. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.2.

Shall we keep acroread in?

Konqueror tried to load it anyway. Suggested by Mark Esplin. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.2.

Shall we put Lyx back in?

People keep requesting this... Most recently by Lars Jensen. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.2.

Also suggested were

f2py, scipy. Done in Quantian 0.4.9.2.

Add pybliographer

Suggested by Jose L Gomez Dans Added in 0.3.9.3.

Run update-modules

To suppress the lame '/etc/modules is older than ...' message on boot Done in 0.3.9.3 with an old-fashioned 'touch -r'.

Add lush

Lisp shell for numerics. Deb packages exist, so should be smooth. Added in 0.3.9.2.

Add felt

Suggested by Herberto Ghezzo. Deb packages exist, so should be smooth. Added in 0.3.9.2.

IPE drawing / graphics editor

From ipe.compgeom.org, available as a .deb in unstable. Added in 0.3.9.2.

Support for giac

Yet another computer-algebra system. Deb packages are at the site. New 0.3.0 downloaded, and installed in 0.3.9.2

Add MIT Photonic Bands and wajig

Suggested by S Dutta Gupta. Both are of course in Debian, so should be easy. Added in 0.3.9.2.

Add kile, another integrated Latex frontend

Suggested by Mike Bourassa. Added in 0.3.9.2.

Complete gap by adding gap-character-tables

Suggested by the Gap team via Bill Allombert Added in 0.3.9.2.

Support for Gri

Gri is an open-source language for scientific graphics programming. As it is already available as a Debian package, it should have been included right from the start. Gri, gri-el and gri-html-doc should be added; xplot may complement Quantian too. Added in Quantian 0.3.

ipython,

Added in Quantian 0.3.

Getting lyx back in

Several emails suggested that removing lyx was suboptimal. We will to correct that in the next version. Added in Quantian 0.3.

Grass

Another suggestion -- but it comes in at a hefty 91.2mb which we currently lack. Added in Quantian 0.3. But removed in 0.3.9.2 as it is just too darn big. Back in 0.4.9.3.

Clustering / Open Mosix support

We had mentioned this right from the start, and have by now received several emails asking about it. This will hopefully be available soon. Added in Quantian 0.3.

We also have some 'not so likely' issues:

ROOT, a toolkit from CERN

While impressive, it is also large and non-free (in the Debian sense) so it not very high on my list of priorities. I would recommended that someone else tackle this is on a standalone basis. Just take Quantian iso images, delete what you must and add ROOT. We are very unlikely to go there. Sorry. Update: Cernlib seems to cover a good part of it, and has been added in 0.5.9.1.

Astronomy software

The iraf and xephem Debian packages have been suggested, also midas but I have not found a .deb for it.
Hm, updated Sep2003: 74.4mb additional space is required for iraf and xephem, and their are, respectively, from contrib and non-free so these will get vetoed for now.

Support for Comedi

Comedi is a collection of drivers for data-acquisition boards, along with user-space and kernel APIs. Debian packaeges already exist so this might be fairly straightforward. Added in Quantian 0.3. And removed in 0.3.9.2 as it comedi needs a matching kernel module. Maybe one day we'll be able to compile it on the fly.

RSessionDA

Greg Warnes has some cool code on top of RPy which integrates R via Zope into powerful webservices. Debian packages would be needed first.