[Numpy-discussion] Newbie Question, Probability

[pearu at cens.ioc.ee]

On Wed, 27 Dec 2006, Christopher Barker wrote:

> Travis Oliphant wrote:
> > It is the 
> > combination of SciPy+NumPy+Matplotlib+IPython (+ perhaps a good IDE) 
> > that can succeed at being a MATLAB/IDL replacement for a lot of people.  
> 
> 
> > What is also needed is a good "package" of it all --- like the Enthon 
> > distribution.   This requires quite a bit of thankless work. 
> 
> I know Robert put some serious effort into "MacEnthon" a while back, but 
> is no longer maintaining that, which doesn't surprise me a bit -- that 
> looked like a LOT of work.
> 
> However, MacEnthon was much bigger than that just the packages Travis 
> listed above, and I think Travis has that right -- those are the key 
> ones to do. Let's "just do it!" -- first we need to solve the 
> Fortran+Universal binary problems though -- that seems to be the 
> technical sticking point on OS-X

Let me add a comment on the Fortran problem (which I assume to be the
(lack of) Fortran compiler problem, right?). I have been working on
f2py rewrite to support wrapping Fortran 90 types among other F90
constructs and as a result we have almost a complete Fortran parser in
Python. It is relatively easy to use this parser to automatically convert
Fortran 77 codes that we have in scipy to C codes whenever no Fortran
compiler is available. Due to lack of funding this work has been
freezed for now but I'd say that there is a hope to resolve the Fortran
compiler issues for any platform in future.

Pearu