Martin v. Löwis <martin <at> v.loewis.de> writes: > Can you please give examples for real-world applications of this > interface, preferably examples involving multiple > independently-developed libraries?
OK -- here's one I haven't seen in this thread yet: wxPython has a lot code to translate between various Python data types and wx data types. An example is PointList Helper. This code examines the input Python data, and translates it to a wxList of wxPoints. It is used in a bunch of the drawing functions, for instance. It has some nifty optimizations so that if a python list if (x,y) tuples is passed in, then the code uses PyList_GetItem() to access the tuples, for instance. If an Nx2 numpy array is passed in, it defaults to PySequence_GetItem() to get the (x,y) pair, and then again to get the values, which are converted to Python numbers, then checked and converted again to C ints. The results is an awful lot of processing, even though the data in the numpy array already exists in a C array that could be exactly the same as the wxList of wxPoints (in fact, many of the drawing methods take a pointer to a correctly formatted C array of data). Right now, it is faster to convert your numpy array of points to a python list of tuples first, then pass it in to wx. However, were there a standard way to describe a buffer (pointer to a C array of data), then the PointListHelper code could look to see if the data is already correctly formated, and pass the pointer right through. If it was not it could still do the translation (like from doubles to ints, for instance) far more efficiently. When I get the chance, I do intend to contribute code to support this in wxPython, using the numpy array interface. However, wouldn't it be better for it to support a generic interface that was in the standard lib, rather than only numpy? While /F suggested we get off the PIL bandwagon, I do have code that has to pass data around between numpy, PIL and wx.Images ( and matplotlib AGG buffers, and GDAL geo-referenced image buffers, and ...). Most do support the current buffer protocol, so it can be done, but I'd be much happier if there was a little more checking going on, rather than my python code having to make sure the data is all arranged in memory the right way. Oh, there is also the Python Cartographic Library, which can take a Python list of tuples as coordinates, and to a Projection on them, but which can't take a numpy array holding that same data. -Chris _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
