Spatial Python, anyone?

[David Ascher]

Magnus Lie Hetland wrote:
> 
> I've recently discovered that I probably need to use
> spatial access methods for some of my research,
> possibly including techniques such as the R*-tree
> and the hB^\Pi-tree... However, I don't know all
> to much about how they work (I would like to use
> them as black boxes), and I don't want to do too
> much of my programming in C/C++... Therefore I thought
> I'd wrap some standard implementations in Python.
> 
> But before doing so, I thought I'd check if anyone
> else shared my interest, and would be willing to
> help in some way. Perhaps we could start a small
> "Spatial Python" project at SourceForge?
> 
> (For those who wonder: Spatial Access Methods are
> about storing/retrieving multi-dimensional points
> and/or regions. Can also be useful in indexing
> other kinds of objects like sequences etc.)

I don't know much about R*, but I did consider doing A* in Python, and
gave it up because of the lousy performance of that kind of algorithm. 
Are A* and R* relatives?

In general, my conclusion after doing numerical work for a while is that
the desire to look at algorithms crucial to your research as black boxes
is futile.  In the end, I always had to dig into the details of the
algorithms because they were either never black-boxable or the black-box
versions didn't do a good enough job.

I wish you another conclusion, though. =)

-- David Ascher
   ActiveState

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