[AstroPy] API question: Instantiating of time/coord and similar

[James Turner]

> Of course, that still requires a sensible API... so I think we want to
> focus on a user-friendly API that is properly documented first (that's

Yes, I think that is important (in addition to an API that's flexible
enough for application developers).

> One further note: astropy.coords cannot require external libraries
> other than numpy (at least not for primary functionality). One of the
> key design components of the astropy core is that this is so - that
> has been discussed at length, and widely agreed on, given all the
> distribution challenges involved.  But affiliated packages are free to
> have whatever dependencies they want.

So that's a key point but I think it still leaves the GPL issue
to address... You mention that there are many libraries, but I suspect
(without reviewing them all) that most (perhaps all) of the others
don't contain certain AST functionality that I consider quite
fundamental for the type of thing I want to do and would really like
to see tightly integrated in the Python infrastructure I use. If I sit
down, study AST and implement a Python version of the algorithm, I
will probably still be bound by the GPL (unless I'm only looking at
the manual and not the code), so am I right in thinking you wouldn't
accept that code?

Cheers,

James.