[Numpy-discussion] Re: Purchasing Documentation

[Perry Greenfield]

First of all, I certainly don't want to prevent Travis from recovering
something for all the effort he has put into scipy_core. Nor do I wish
to discourage anyone that wishes to provide alternative free 
documentation
if they so choose. But I will note some facts about numarray 
documentation
below that may prove useful to anyone considering the latter.

On Oct 4, 2005, at 1:32 AM, Tim Churches wrote:

> Paul F. Dubois wrote:
>> The original sources were in Framemaker. I am not positive where they
>> are. In any case they are copyrighted by the Regents of the University
>> of California. I am not a lawyer and don't know what the consequences 
>> of
>> that are. LLNL granted free distribution of the printed document with
>> the Numeric source code but I don't know what their position would be 
>> on
>> using their copyrighted text in a new document or on giving away the
>> sources.

The numarray User's Manual was derived from the Numpy manual that LLNL
originally sponsored David Ascher to write (if that is incorrect I'm 
sure
Paul will correct me). We dutifully propagated the legal notice in the
original to the numarray version. Although IANAL I'll note that the
text seems to permit changes by others, but it also seems mis-worded as
it refers to software, not documentation regarding the rights. What that
really means in the end I'm not sure.

In any case, Jochen Kupper (I hope I have that right) converted the 
format
from Framemaker to the Python document latex style. The source for the
numarray version is currently on sourceforge (under the numarray/doc
directory). I'll also note much of the capabilities in scipy_core are
very similar to those of numarray. There are differences, though I don't
believe it would take a great deal of work to udpate the numarray 
version
to reflect these (e.g. the changes in the types system, how rank-0
issues, the C-API, object array details and the names of the standard
packages within scipy_core.)

> OK, thanks Paul. That may have implications for you, Travis, if you are
> planning to base your SciPy Core book on the existing NumPy 
> documentation.
>
 From what I've seen of it, I don't believe it is based at all on the
original manual or any derivative, but I'll leave that for Travis to
comment further on.

Perry