[SciPy-user] Current thoughts on future directions

[Travis Oliphant]

I had a lengthy discussion with Eric today and clarified some things in 
my mind about the future directions of scipy.    The following is 
basically what we have decided.  We are still interested in input so 
don't think the issues are closed,  but I'm just giving people an idea 
of my (and Eric's as far as I understand it) thinking on scipy.

1) There will be a scipy_core  package which will be essentially what 
Numeric has always been (plus a few easy to install extras already in 
current scipy_core).   It will likely contain the functionality of (the 
names and placements will be similar to current scipy_core). 

Numeric3  (actually called ndarray  or narray or numstar or numerix or 
something....)
fft      (based on c-only code -- no fortran dependency)
linalg (a lite version -- no fortran or ATLAS dependency)
stats  (a lite version --- no fortran dependency)
special (only c-code --- no fortran dependency)
weave
f2py?    (still need to ask Pearu about this)
scipy_distutils and testing
matrix and polynomial classes

...others...?

We will push to make this an easy-to-install effective replacement for 
Numeric and hopefully for numarray users as well.   Therefore community 
input and assistance will be particularly important.

2) The rest of scipy will be a package (or a series of packages) of 
algorithms.  We will not try to do plotting as part of scipy.  The 
current plotting in scipy will be supported for a time, but users will 
be weaned off to other packages:  matplotlib, pygist (for xplt -- and I 
will work to get any improvements for xplt into pygist itself),  
gnuplot,  etc.

3) Having everything under a scipy namespace is not necessary, nor worth 
worrying about at this point. 


My scipy-related focus over the next 5-6 months will be to get 
scipy_core to the point that most can agree it effectively replaces the 
basic tools of Numeric and numarray.


-Travis