ConformalLabpp/doc/roadmap/phases.md

Development Roadmap

Legend: ✅ complete · 🔲 planned

Porting / research boundary:
Phases 1–7 are direct ports of the Java original and its dissertation.
From Phase 8 onwards the work goes beyond the scope of the Java library.
Phase 8 (CGAL package) is infrastructure. Phase 9 is porting of remaining Java features.
Phase 10+ is independent research with no direct Java reference implementation.

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◼ Porting complete — Phases 1–7

Phase 1   Clausen / Lobachevsky / ImLi₂ special functions            ✅
Phase 2   Hyper-ideal geometry  (ζ, lᵢⱼ, αᵢⱼ, σᵢ, σᵢⱼ)             ✅
Phase 3   CGAL Surface_mesh infrastructure + all three functionals
          (Euclidean, Spherical, HyperIdeal)
          + analytical Hessians for Euclidean + Spherical
          (HyperIdeal Hessian: symmetric FD — analytic deferred to 9b) ✅
Phase 4   Newton solver (SimplicialLDLT + SparseQR fallback)
          + Mesh I/O (OFF/OBJ/PLY) + example programs                ✅   68 tests
Phase 5   Priority-BFS layout + CLI app + JSON/XML serialisation      ✅   95 tests
Phase 6   Gauss–Bonnet check/enforce, tree-cotree cut graph (2g),
          exact hyperbolic trilateration, layout normalisation        ✅  121 tests
Phase 7   MobiusMap, halfedge_uv, Möbius holonomy (SU(1,1)),
          period matrix τ∈ℍ + SL(2,ℤ) reduction,
          fundamental domain parallelogram + tiling                  ✅  176 tests

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◼ Infrastructure — Phase 8: CGAL Package

Goal: conformallab++ as a standalone CGAL package, submission-ready, fulfilling all CGAL package conventions with a traits-class design compatible with any CGAL-conforming mesh type.

8a   Traits class & concepts
       → include/CGAL/Conformal_map_traits.h
       Separates MeshType, KernelType, ScalarType from the algorithm.
       Enables use with any CGAL-compatible mesh, not just Surface_mesh.
       → Concept checks via static_assert / CGAL_concept_check

8b   Public CGAL header hierarchy
       → include/CGAL/Discrete_conformal_map.h     (user-facing entry header)
       → include/CGAL/Conformal_newton_solver.h
       → include/CGAL/Conformal_layout.h
       → include/CGAL/Conformal_cut_graph.h
       All existing include/conformallab/*.hpp remain as implementation details.

8c   CGAL-style documentation
       → doc/Conformal_map/PackageDescription.txt
       → doc/Conformal_map/fig/                    (pipeline diagrams)
       → Doxygen comments on all public concepts and functions
       → User_manual.md + Reference_manual.md

8d   CGAL test format
       → test/Conformal_map/CMakeLists.txt         (CGAL-style CMake)
       Existing GTest tests remain; CGAL-format tests are added alongside.

8e   Declarative YAML pipeline
       → Lightweight YAML format for reproducible experiments
         (specification in doc/api/cgal-package.md)
       → Validator: checks require/provide tokens before execution
       → CLI integration: conformallab_core --pipeline experiment.yml

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◼ Remaining porting — Phase 9

Java features from de.varylab.discreteconformal not yet in C++:

9a   Inversive-distance functional (Luo 2004 / Bowers–Stephenson)
       → inversive_distance_functional.hpp
       Follows the exact same pattern as the three existing functionals.
       → newton_inversive_distance()
       → New test suite: test_inversive_distance.cpp

9b   Analytic HyperIdeal Hessian
       → Replace FD Hessian in hyper_ideal_hessian.hpp
       Direct differentiation through the chain:
         (bᵢ, aₑ) → lᵢⱼ → ζ₁₃/ζ₁₄/ζ₁₅ → αᵢⱼ / βᵢ
       Relevant for meshes > 500 DOFs (current FD Hessian is slow there).

9c   4g-polygon boundary walk (genus g > 1)
       → Extend compute_fundamental_domain() beyond genus 1
       Algorithm outline already in fundamental_domain.hpp as TODO(Phase 9).
       Java reference: FundamentalDomainUtility.java

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◼ Optional / Hypothetical — geometry-central Cross-Comparison

Status: no planned phase — purely exploratory.
These items are not prerequisites for Phase 8–10. They are of interest because geometry-central (Keenan Crane, CMU) is built on the same mathematical foundations as conformallab++ — in particular Springborn 2020 and its direct extension by Gillespie, Springborn & Crane (SIGGRAPH 2021).
The key difference: geometry-central solves the same problem (discrete conformal equivalence) using intrinsic triangulations + Ptolemaic flips, while conformallab++ applies Newton on the original triangulation.

GC-1  [optional, possible now]
      Mathematical output comparison
        → load the same test meshes (cathead.obj, brezel.obj, torus_4x4.off) into
          both libraries
        → compare UV coordinates, u-vector, residual norm
        → align normalisation conventions (u mean, scaling)
      Goal: independent cross-validation of convergence points.
      Effort: small Python/C++ comparison script, no library restructuring.

GC-2  [optional, useful after Phase 8]
      Intrinsic Delaunay pre-conditioning
        → before the Newton solver: apply geometry-central SignpostIntrinsicTriangulation
          to the input
        → Ptolemaic flips pre-condition the Hessian matrix
        → hypothesis: fewer Newton iterations on non-Delaunay inputs
        → implementable as an optional cmake flag: -DWITH_GC_PRECOND=ON
      Dependency: geometry-central as an optional external dependency
      (header-only parts suffice for the flip algorithm).

GC-3  [hypothetical, Phase 10+ research]
      Ptolemaic flip-based solver as an alternative backend
        → instead of Newton: Ptolemaic flips + penultimate-step normalisation
          (Gillespie–Springborn–Crane 2021 algorithm)
        → comparison: convergence radius, robustness on pathological meshes,
          numerical stability on high-genus surfaces
        → relevant for conformallab++ because the Newton approach can become
          unstable on strongly non-Delaunay meshes (e.g. after remeshing).
      No implementation planned — conceptual note for Phase 10 research.

Connection to the literature:
The Springborn 2020 paper ("Ideal Hyperbolic Polyhedra and Discrete Uniformization") is already implemented in conformallab++ as the HyperIdeal geometry mode (Phase 2/3). The Gillespie–Springborn–Crane 2021 extension — implemented in geometry-central — augments this with intrinsic triangulations and makes the algorithm robust against poor input triangulations. Both share the same mathematical core (discrete conformal equivalence, Gauss–Bonnet, variational principle of Bobenko–Springborn 2004).

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◼ New research — Phase 10+

No direct Java reference implementation exists for these items.

Phase 10   Global uniformization for genus g ≥ 2

10a  Discrete holomorphic differentials
       Integrate basis 1-forms ωᵢ along b-cycles of the cut graph.
       Mathematical basis: Bobenko–Springborn (2004), §6.
       Java partial reference: DiscreteHolomorphicFormUtility.java

10b  Siegel period matrix Ω ∈ H_g  (g×g complex symmetric, Im(Ω) > 0)
       Ωᵢⱼ = ∫_{bⱼ} ωᵢ
       Reduction to Siegel fundamental domain via Sp(2g,ℤ).
       Requires: 10a

10c  Full uniformization for genus g ≥ 2
       Embedding as H²/Γ with Γ ⊂ PSL(2,ℝ) a Fuchsian group.
       Requires: 10a + 10b + stable cut graph for g ≥ 2 (Phase 9c)