[Numpy-discussion] [SciPy-dev] Weave, numpy, external libraries and conflicting typedefs

[Fernando Perez]

On 7/7/06, Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> wrote:

> I'm not opposed to putting a *short* prefix in front of everything (the
> Int32, Float64, stuff came from numarray which now has it's own
> back-ward compatible header where it could be placed now anyway).
> Perhaps npy_  would be a suitable prefix.
>
> That way we could get rid of the cruft entirely.

Well, now is your chance to clean up all the APIs, /including/ the C
ones :) npy_ or NPy, I'm not too sure what conventions you are
following at the C naming level.

I'm all for cruft removal and making things easy to use out of the
box, even at the cost of making the transition a bit more work.
Remember, that's a one time cost.  And numpy is so good that people
/will/ transition from Numeric eventually, so might as well make the
end result as nice and appealing as possible.  As other tools (like
matplotlib) move eventually to numpy-only support, the incentive to
making the switch will really go up for just about anyone using python
for numerical work.  At the risk of sounding a bit harsh, I think you
can then say, 'take the pain for the switch if you really want all the
new goodies'.

Those who positively, absolutely can't update from Numeric can then
just keep a frozen codebase.  It's not like you're breaking Numeric
24.2 or deleting it from the internet :)

Cheers,
f