[SciPy-user] ndimage - why is output_type deprecated ?

[Zachary Pincus]

> thanks for the info.
> But I have to say, that this is a really non-intuitive overloading.
>
> I would suggest, to use a separate keyword argument like
> "dtype" instead.
> "dtype"  is used for this already in many other functions like
> np.array, np.zeros, np.empty, .....
> I would have never guessed -- the doc strings didn't say either ....

A ton about ndimage is under-documented, confusing, or slightly  
broken. (Nevertheless, it remains really useful.) Ndimage could really  
use a good API and documentation cleaning, as well as some attention  
from someone who understands the spline-interpolation code internal to  
the interpolators (and can thus fix some of the open bugs on that).  
Unfortunately, that person isn't me...

Maybe we can start by filing various bugs on it, and then organize  
folks who use ndimage to have a doc-day sort of thing.

As to adding a 'dtype' parameter, I guess that the output_type  
parameter has been deprecated long enough that it could be removed,  
and 'dtype' put in its place, and then the overloaded use of 'output'  
be itself deprecated. Hopefully someone more familiar with the API- 
breakage/deprecation policy could chime in here.

Zach