Dunk Fordyce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> so what is the future of soya?
Soya is a useful 3D programming environment for Python. If it
continues to be developed and maintained, I'm sure it has a good
future.
> what do you want?
My application is probably a little different from that of most Soya
users: I'm using Soya to for visualization of airframe dynamics. I'm
interested in a clear, easy-to-understand presentation of this data. I
do not use a number of the ``advanced'' features of Soya (armatures,
ODE, etc.).
Given this, I am happy Soya's current features.
> what are your ideas?
Despite my contentment, I do have some ideas.
General ideas:
1. Introduce unit tests
I'm don't know if automated testing is possible for the routines
that actually draw things, but a lot could be tested, e.g., the math
code.
2. Split _soya.pyx / _soya.c
_soya.c is a 80k line C file -- smaller compilation units would make
hacking on the Pyrex code *much* easier (I was using a PIII-500MHz
over the Christmas break, and Soya took a long time to compile).
3. Use package modules
The soya package has a lot of elements, some not obviously useful:
e.g., what is soya.Bonus ? why soya.BLACK and soya.WHITE, but no
soya.RED ?
Twisted have an interesting package policy: as I understand it, the
package itself contains very little; i.e., __init__.py is empty. All
classes/functions are contained in modules in a package. I'm not
sure how to apply this to Soya.
4. Adopt a coding standard
Something like the Python coding standard
http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0008.html
and the Twisted coding standard
http://cvs.twistedmatrix.com/cvs/*checkout*/trunk/doc/core/howto/policy/coding-standard.xhtml
could be used.
More specific ideas:
1. Class docstrings
A numder of classes have important documentation given in the
constructor's (that is, __init__'s) docstring. See, e.g., CoordSyst,
_FixTraveling, and _Vertex. However, Python completely ignores these
docstrings:
>>> print soya.Vertex.__init__.__doc__
x.__init__(...) initializes x; see x.__class__.__doc__ for signature
This should be fixed -- i.e., the __init__ docstring should be moved
up to the class docstring.
2. soya.World's dict/list behaviour
I can't tell if soya.World is supposed to act like a dict or a
list. __getitem__ takes a name as 'index', but __delitem__ takes a
numeric index. Given the presence of append/insert/remove, I guess
World is supposed to be list-like; this slight schizophrenia should
be resolved.
3. Include 'name' in __repr__
If a CoordSyst has a name, it should be printed in it's repr
Finally, there is a small, annoying issue with the __module__
attribute of builtin (i.e., Pyrex/C) classes:
>>> from soya.pudding.style import Style
>>> Style.__module__
'soya.pudding.style'
>>> from soya._soya import _Vertex
>>> _Vertex.__module__
'_soya'
This breaks pydoc links; I think it may be a Pyrex or Python issue,
rather than a Soya one.
Regards,
Rory
(HappyFool on freenode)
