Difficult to quantify. However NEdit, by the same authors with the same technologies is being used successfully by a large community. Python has a very large community of users and a large set of ressources. Eventually Histoscope and NFit could be distributed as python add-on, thus growing the user base.
Nirvana is 'owned' by Fermilab and will survice has long as Fermilab supports it.
Fermilab
Fermilab's 'customer'.
Yes it is already used by the HEP community but no newsgroup. Python has newsgroups and existing knowledgable person in the HEP community.
Might need training for Python. GUI is good enough to be learnt on the spot.
Available for Python.
Same as python (and the Nirvana group for Nirvana's specific parts)
Yes up to version 4. New features will need documentation.
Fermilab
Yes
No.
Ansi C and Motif. Standard makefiles.
Yes
N/A
No
Yes
No
Yes
Will need an upgrade of the Graphical Interface and the addition of an interpreter (with Python the likely choice) (The latter comment seems to be a little hasty to me.)
Yes.
Yes
To a large extend.
Yes. Graphical Interface, interpreter and I/O are three sub-packages.
Currently need Motif and Minuit. Will need python.
Available on ALL platform as of June 98.
ok.
Nirvana writes Big Endian IEEE (IEEE floating points) files.
ok.
the few authors have entire control.
it's alright
yes
No high level design tool is currently used.