[SciPy-dev] Scikits and stuff

[Travis E. Oliphant]

Hey everyone,

In preparation for doc-day tomorrow, I've been thinking about scikits 
and its relationship to scipy.   There seem to be three distinct 
purposes of scikits:

1) A place for specialized tool boxes that build on numpy and/or scipy 
that live under a common name-space, but are too specialized to live in 
scipy itself.
2) A place for GPL or similarly-licensed tools so that people can 
understand what they are getting and appropriate use can be made.
3) A place for modularly-installed scipy tools.

Given these three purposes.  It seems that we should have three name-spaces:

1) scikits
2) ??? perhaps scigpl
3) scipy  (why not use the same namespace --- there is a technological 
hurdle that may prevent egg distribution of these until we fix it.  But, 
I think we can fix it and would rather not invent another name-space for 
something that should be scipy).

This idea occurred to me, when I was thinking about "tagging" modules in 
scikits so users could understand the tool.  But, at that point it 
seemed obvious that we should just have different name-spaces which 
would promote the needed clarity.

Ideas.

-Travis O.