2008/8/18 Travis E. Oliphant oliphant@enthought.com:
I still think we are going about this the wrong way. We have two different sets of expectations, and we can't satisfy both by ripping everything apart. I'd much prefer two entry points into NumPy: one for people who need speed, and one for those who need the convenience of everything being at hand.
I think you are right Stefan. It would be great to have another name-space that is lighter from which numpy imports. But there is no reason to hold up these useful speed increases waiting for a better solution.
Just to be clear: I am very happy for the speed improvements. I'm just urging for the same caution in changing the user-visible API that has been shown for the C-level API. While the C-level changes require a recompile, the user-visible changes require a rewrite.
This does not pertain to numpy.doc, which has never been exposed to the world before. There is a bigger issue that needs to be considered here, though, and that is whether NumPy will move from its historic idiom of exposing everything to the user upon import, or whether we'll require more imports to be made manually.
Regards Stéfan