[Numpy-discussion] packaging scipy (was Re: Simple financial functions for NumPy)
Steven H. Rogers
steve at shrogers.com
Tue Apr 8 08:15:25 EDT 2008
Perry Greenfield wrote:
> ...
> Some random comments:
>
> 1) It seems to me that the primary problem people have with a big
> flat namespace is that it makes the output of dir() long and
> unusable, and by implication, that a nice hierarchical organization
> would make it easier for people to find stuff. As to the latter, less
> so than you might think. From what I've seen, there is no generally
> agreed upon organization that all will agree to or find intuitive.
> There will always be functions that logically belong to more than one
> category. Ultimately, this is why flatter is better as far as that
> goes. If one wants to find things by category, we would be much
> better off tagging functions with categories and then building some
> dir-like tool that helps display things in that category. Some have
> already alluded to that (Joe Harrington I believe). The only thing
> namespaces solve is name collisions imho. I don't believe that the
> current numpy has too many names in its basic namespace, and it
> already has split out some things into subpackages (fft, random,
> linear algebra) that have such a potential.
>
At the IPython Sprint in Boulder last year Fernando suggested that
someone look at this issue. I've given it some thought and started a
wiki page for it. Inputs would be welcome and might motivate me to find
the time to implement something.
http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/Developer_Zone/SearchDocs
# Steve
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