[AstroPy] Porting "IDL Astronomy User's Library" to numpy

[W.T. Bridgman]

Perry,

I believe some of those documents are getting a bit dated.  They  
still refer to only supporting numarray vs Numeric.  Don't those need  
to be updated to specify numpy?

Newcomers to the list might be confused if not familiar with the  
history, especially considering the numpy begat numeric begat  
numarray begat numpy timeline.

Tom


On Jul 16, 2007, at 12:03 PM, Perry Greenfield wrote:

>
> On Jul 16, 2007, at 9:13 AM, Yannick Copin wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'd be interested in some astronomical utilities from the IDL
>> Astronomy User's
>> Library (http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/contents.html) converted to
>> python/numpy. I had a look to idl2python
>> (http://software.pseudogreen.org/i2py/), but the automatic
>> translation fails,
>> mostly because (I think) the conversion is Numeric-oriented, and
>> because of
>> the intrinsic differences in the function argument management
>> between IDL and
>> python.
>>
>> So, before pursuing in this direction, I'd like to know if this
>> exercice has
>> already been done, at least partially.
>>
> We have the idea of doing it, but not in a very literal sense
> (translating idl routines to Python counterparts). There has been
> some work in this area on our part, but because of budget pressures,
> much less over the last 2 years than hoped (things are looking better
> now, but it may be some months before activity picks up on this front
> again).
>
> Work so far on our part has centered on:
>
> Coordinate transformation utilities
> Synthetic photometry
>
> So if you are interested in doing more literal translations, please
> feel free to go right ahead. There is even a place to put such stuff:
> http://www.scipy.org/AstroLib
>
> Perry
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--
Dr. William T."Tom" Bridgman               Scientific Visualization  
Studio
Global Science & Technology, Inc.          NASA/Goddard Space Flight  
Center
Email: William.T.Bridgman.1 at gsfc.nasa.gov  Code 610.3
Phone: 301-286-1346                        Greenbelt, MD 20771
FAX:   301-286-1634                        http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/