[Python-Dev] buffer interface considered harmful

[Fredrik Lundh]

David Ascher <da@ski.org> wrote:
> Why?  PIL was designed for image processing, and made design decisions
> appropriate to that domain.  NumPy was designed for multidimensional
> numeric array processing, and made design decisions appropriate to that
> domain. The intersection of interests exists (e.g. in the medical imaging
> world), and I know people who spend a lot of their CPU time moving data
> between images and arrays with "stupid" tostring/fromstring operations.  
> Given the size of the images, it's a prodigious waste of time, and kills
> the use of Python in many a project.

as an aside, PIL 1.1 (*) introduces "virtual image memories" which
are, as I mentioned in an earlier post, accessed via an API rather
than via direct pointers.  it'll also include an adapter allowing you
to use NumPy objects as image memories.

unfortunately, the buffer interface is not good enough to use
on top of the virtual image memory interface...

</F>

*) 1.1 is our current development thread, which will be
released to plus customers in a number of weeks...