Fernando Perez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Alex Martelli wrote: > > > the coverage of Twisted and adding just a few things (numarray -- > > perhaps premature to have it _instead_ of Numeric, though; dateutils, > > You might want to keep in touch with the scipy/numarray gang on this > particular topic. An effort is currently under way to make scipy work > with numarray, and matplotlib already works with numarray out of the box. > These two facts will, I think, greatly accelerate the adoption of numarray > and the transition away from Numeric. There are a few people (like me, > unfortunately), who can simply not use numarray because of the small array > instatiation overhead. But that subcommunity tends to know enough to be > able to deal with the problems by itself. Since numarray is indeed the > long-term array core for Python, I think the book would be better off by > covering it. Numarray is actively developed, and vastly better documented > than Numeric.
Well, I _am_ going to cover or at least "mention" numarray -- my question was on whether I can _drop_ Numeric in favour of numarray. In good part _because_ numarray has good docs, it may be less crucial for me to cover it thoroughly, than I felt it was for Numeric. Three years ago, numarray was barely a blip on the radar, if that; three years from now, the same may be true of Numeric; but right now, I get some sense that we're "in transition" -- that numarray needs and deserves coverage or at least extended mention, BUT nevertheless it might be premature to drop the coverage of Numeric... > A mention of the particular problems with numarray might be a good idea, so > that readers are aware of Numeric and where it may still be preferable to > numarray, but with the understanding that it's a (shrinking) niche. Hopefully > one day that niche will shrink to zero, but that is going to take time and > work. Right -- and if I can get the 2nd ed of the Nutshell out within 2005, it may be too early to say that Numeric has shrunk to the vanishing point... so I may still need to have both in... > Finally, I think in this section a mention of the overall scipy project would > be a good idea. Scipy is the central meeting point for most scientific > computing projects in python, and therefore a natural reference for most users > of numarray/numeric. Amongst other useful things at the scipy site, there's a > community maintained wiki of links to python-based projects of scientific > interest: > > http://www.scipy.org/wikis/topical_software/TopicalSoftware Most definitely a good idea, thanks. Indeed, the lack of mention of scipy _is_ a wart in the 1st ed -- as my excuse I can only explain that I was _so_ focused on being focused... I ended up excising even all mentions of my own baby, gmpy...!-) But yes, scipy _will_ most definitely get a mention this time around -- thanks for reminding me!-) Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list