[Numpy-discussion] I/O documentation and code

[Ralf Gommers]

Hi,

I'm working on the I/O documentation, and have a bunch of questions.

1. The npy/npz formats are documented in lib.format and in the NEP (
http://svn.scipy.org/svn/numpy/trunk/doc/neps/npy-format.txt). Is lib.format
the right place to add relevant parts of the NEP, or would doc.io be better?
Or create a separate page (maybe doc.npy_format)? And is the .npz format
fixed or still in flux?

2. Is the .npy format version number (now at 1.0) independent of the numpy
version numbering, when is it incremented, and will it be backwards
compatible?

3. For a longer coherent overview of I/O, does that go in doc.io or
routines.io.rst?

4. This page http://www.scipy.org/Data_sets_and_examples talks about
including data sets with scipy, has this happened? Would it be possible to
include a single small dataset in numpy for use in examples?

5. DataSource contains a lot of TODOs and behavior that is documented as a
bug in the docstring. Is anyone working on this? If not, I can give it a go.
TODOs that need work, or at least a yes/no decision:
5a. .zip and .tar support (is .tar needed?)
5b. URLs only work if they include 'http://' (currently documented as a bug,
which it not necessarily is. fix or document?)
5c. _cache() does not handle compressed files, and should use
shutils.copyfile
5d. make abspath() more robust
5e. in open(), support for creating files and adding a 'subdir' parameter
(needed?)

Does anyone have (self-contained) code using DataSource, or a suggestion for
data on the web that can be used in examples?

Cheers,
Ralf
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