re: Status of Numeric (and plotting in particular)
We have started on this over the past month, and hope to have some simple functionality available within a month (though when we make it public may take a bit longer). It will be open source and we hope significantly simpler than chaco. It will not focus on speed (well, we want fairly fast display times for plots of a reasonable number of points, but we don't need video refresh rates). If your interest in plotting matches ours, then this may be for you. We will welcome contributions and comments once we get it off the ground. (We are calling it pyxis by the way).
I agree with the sentiment that chaco is a very heavy and confusing package for the average scientist (but maybe great for the full-time programmer) but I'm really concerned about the idea that we need *another* solution started from scratch. There are already so many including scipy.gplt, scipy.plt, dislin, biggles, pychart, piddle, pgplot, pyx (new)... In particular MatPlotLib looks promising - check out its examples: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html *Many* plotting types already , simple syntax, a few different backends. And already has something of a following. So is it really not possible for STScI to push its resources into aiding the development of something that's already begun? Would be great if we could develop a single package really well rather than everyone making their own. -- Jon Peirce Nottingham University +44 (0)115 8467176 (tel) +44 (0)115 9515324 (fax) http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/jwp/
Jon Peirce writes:
I agree with the sentiment that chaco is a very heavy and confusing package for the average scientist (but maybe great for the full-time programmer) but I'm really concerned about the idea that we need *another* solution started from scratch. There are already so many including scipy.gplt, scipy.plt, dislin, biggles, pychart, piddle, pgplot, pyx (new)...
We had looked all of these and each had fallen short in some major way (though I thought piddle had much promise and perhaps could be built on; however it was intended as a back end only.)
In particular MatPlotLib looks promising - check out its examples: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html *Many* plotting types already , simple syntax, a few different backends. And already has something of a following.
This we had not seen. A superficial look indicates that it is worth investigating further as a basis for a plotting package. I didn't see any major problem with it that contradicted our requirements, but obviously we will have to look at it in more depth to see if that is the case. It doesn't have to be perfect of course. And it is much more expensive tto start from scratch (though we weren't doing that entirely since a number of components from the chaco effort would have been reused). But this is worth seriously considering. Perry Greenfield
So is it really not possible for STScI to push its resources into aiding the development of something that's already begun? Would be great if we could develop a single package really well rather than everyone making their own.
Perry Greenfield <perry@stsci.edu>:
Jon Peirce writes:
I agree with the sentiment that chaco is a very heavy and confusing package for the average scientist (but maybe great for the full-time programmer) but I'm really concerned about the idea that we need *another* solution started from scratch. There are already so many including scipy.gplt, scipy.plt, dislin, biggles, pychart, piddle, pgplot, pyx (new)...
We had looked all of these and each had fallen short in some major way (though I thought piddle had much promise and perhaps could be built on; however it was intended as a back end only.)
Wohoo! Piddle lives ;) I think I'd be interested in resuming some of my earlier work on Piddle if it is ever used for something useful -- such as a proper plotting tool. (I was actually just thinking about wrapping PyX in the Piddle interface to make TeX typesetting available in Piddle.) [snip about mathplotlib] Hm. Maybe a Piddle back-end could be written for it (which would instantly give it lots of extra back-ends)...? Two birds with one stone and all that... - M -- Magnus Lie Hetland "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, http://hetland.org but a fire to be lighted." [Plutarch]
participants (3)
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Jon Peirce
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Magnus Lie Hetland
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Perry Greenfield