[SciPy-user] Clarification sought on various Python numerical packages

[Travis Oliphant]

Robert Kern wrote:

>Robert Hetland wrote:
>  
>
>>On May 3, 2006, at 11:04 AM, David Huard wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I'd like to put this historical note on the wiki. Any objections ?
>>>      
>>>
>
>None from me. There are some gaps, of course, but maybe the Wiki magic will help
>fill them in. Also, reference should be made to the Introduction of _The Guide
>to NumPy_ which goes into some more detail on this subject.
>  
>

Robert gave a good start to the wiki.  Somebody should copy his comments 
over.  

>  http://numeric.scipy.org/scipybooksample.pdf
>
>  
>
>>Also, I would like an update on how far along numpy (or some subset)  
>>is in being included in the standard python codebase.  A while ago, I  
>>thought it was going to maybe be put into 2.5.  Is this still true,  
>>because I don't see much evidence for it in the python2.5 What's New  
>>documentation.  If false, what are the present plans?
>>    
>>
>
>It's definitely not going to happen in 2.5. I don't think numpy as a whole will
>ever go into the standard library. It's possible that an ndarray object and
>ufuncs and very little else might go into 3.0, but my crystal ball is cloudy at
>the moment. The most likely thing to happen is that Tim Hochberg's basearray or
>something like it will go into 2.6. Pre-3.0, the focus is going to be on
>spreading the use of the array interface rather than putting a whole
>array-handling package into the standard library.
>
>  
>

Again this is right on.   If a student were to get funded by the Summer 
of Code project.  I proposed a project and one student has expressed 
interest...

If this is successful, perhaps the idea of a basearray object going into 
Python itself could actually get done by version 2.6.    I've already 
got an outline for this thing (I've called it genarray,  others 
dimarray).  I like basearray best of all the names.

For my outline, look at the PEP here:

http://svn.scipy.org/svn/PEP