[Python-3000] Using memoryviews

[Stefan Behnel]

M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> I find the implementation of the buffer protocol way too complicated.
> One of the reasons why the buffer protocol in Python 2 never caught
> on was the fact that it was too complicated and the Python 3 is
> even worse in this respect.
> 
> In practice you do want to have the ability to hook directly into the
> data buffer of an object, but apart from some special needs that PIL
> and the numeric folks may have, most users will just want to work
> with a single contiguous chunk of memory and need a simple API to
> do this - pass in an object, get a void* back.

Cython makes it that easy to access a buffer (also in Python 2.3-2.5, BTW).
You only have to declare the type of a buffer variable.

http://wiki.cython.org/enhancements/buffer

According to what I hear, at least the NumPy developers make use of this
already. No idea how common it is in the PIL area, but it does work there, too.

Stefan