Hey, Tony

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Tony Yu <tsyu80@gmail.com> wrote:
> Possible Con
> ------------------------
> Someone mentioned a while back that it would be a good idea to keep skimage
> focused on the basic toolset, and then a separate package could build off of
> it.
>
> Counter-argument: This infrastructure (so far, at least) is fairly
> lightweight, and I imagine the biggest area of growth would be the
> plugins---most of which would just provide an interactive interface to
> skimage functions.

This is the way I see it too: one of skimage's most important
contributions is to provide an easily-accessible Python platform for
building image processing solutions.  This exactly means having good
pipelines, good display, and all the tools needed to build a complete
solution.  Some of the algorithms may be obtained from elsewhere
(e.g., opencv)--but even so, building a solution using those packages
is currently still a pain.  So, I see the construction of these basic
tools and building blocks as a fundamental part of what we're trying
to do.

> Counter-argument: skimage would provide the simplest possible interface for
> adding interactivity (taking advantage of Matplotlib tools for plotting
> histograms, etc and its support for multiple gui toolkits). A separate
> project would be ideal for gui-toolkit--specific viewers (which could
> potentially be significantly fast) since it would likely take more code to
> do some of these things (I could be wrong about this). Also, I assume more
> people using skimage would know matplotlib over any specific backend.

I think from the start we assumed that we'd be building tools on
Matplotlib and Qt.  If something better comes along, we should
consider it--of course--but in the meantime it still seems like a
reasonable choice.  If the plugin infrastructure can be improved to
make it easier to build external tools, I'm also all for that.

> I'd like to come to some sort of consensus, if possible, so please---if you
> *any* opinions on this---let your voice be heard.

I guess my opinion is obvious, but for the record: I'd love to include
this work directly as part of skimage.  But, if that's not to be, I
still encourage it whole-heartedly!

Stéfan