[MATRIX-SIG] [long] A NO-Proposal for a plot-package

[Geoffrey Furnish]

Konrad Hinsen writes:
 > - Let's have a Sci-SIG for general discussions about scientific
 >   applications, including discussions of features of proposed
 >   packages etc., and also announcements of test versions.

You want to just relabel matrix-sig as sci-sig?  And generalize the
charter?

 > - Create separate mailing lists (not formal SIGs) for communication
 >   between the people working in specific code, e.g. plotting or
 >   array indexing.
 > 
 > Does this sound reasonable?

I do not favor non-sig mailing lists for discussion of major
subsystems.  They are not really very open for people to
subscribe/unsubscribe, since one has to bother a person instead of a
daemon.  One of the best things about a sig is that people can get on
and off without having to ask for help.  Also, such ad-hoc lists are
not archived.

 > > 2) Who is the owner going to be?  Its not a particularly big job, but
 > >    it should be someone who cares enough to keep things in order if
 > >    need be.  
 > 
 > It seems to me that a SIG owner has very little work to do, so that
 > shouldn't be a problem. The real question is: Who will write the code? ;-)

This sounds a little to me like the presumption of the one true
python-centric solution mentioned previously.  This is arguably
reasonable for a direct language facility like the matrix stuff, but I
think it is basically misplaced loyalty when applied to non-language
intrinsic facilities.  For instance, there is no "one true python
database" as far as I know, but rather (as I understand it) bindings
to databases that people use.  That would seem to me to be the more
appropriate expectation with respect to plotting.  So, who will write
the code?  Plenty of people are already doing this.  What is of
interest to the python community is to have good python support for
plotting facilities that already exist.  And possibly to influence
them.  But I don't see a need to produce a whole new python-oriented
plotting facility.

-- 
Geoffrey Furnish                email: furnish@lanl.gov
LANL CIC-19 POOMA/RadTran       phone: 505-665-4529     fax: 505-665-7880

"Software complexity is an artifact of implementation."    -Dan Quinlan

_______________
MATRIX-SIG  - SIG on Matrix Math for Python

send messages to: matrix-sig@python.org
administrivia to: matrix-sig-request@python.org
_______________