[SciPy-dev] [pymachine] moving code outside the sandbox into scikits ?

[Jarrod Millman]

On 6/23/07, Matthieu Brucher <matthieu.brucher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We have been calling the project pymachine. But we would rather use a
> > more descriptive name for the scikit package (and one that doesn't
> > contain 'py').  Here are some ideas:
> > - scikits.learning
> > - scikits.learn
> > - scikits.machinelearning
> > - scikits.mlearn
> > What do you think of these names?  Does anyone have better name in mind?
>
> machinelearning is my favourite, but I would think of a more global
> hierarchy inside this namespace. svm and em do not have the same final goal,
> so perhaps adding classification or estimation as sub-sub-namespace would be
> worth considering.
>
> Matthieu

Hey Matthieu,

I agree with you, scikits.machinelearning is my favorite as well.  I
understand Dmitrey's concern about it being such a long name, but I
think that it is much more important for the package name to be
obvious as to what it does.  Hopefully, having a well-named package
will make it more obvious what the very terse names like svm or em
mean given that they are found inside a machinelearning package.  I
also want to make sure that a good precedent is started regarding the
naming of scikits packages.

I also like your suggestion to use something like "import
scikits.machinelearning as ml".  It might be good to even have a
recommendation like this in the package docstring.  That way we could
encourage the adoption of ml (for scikits.machinelearning) as a
consistent convention.

I also agree that we may need to create a nested hierarchy.  But I
would prefer to keep a flat namespace at least for the next few weeks.
 That way we can make the hierarchy after seeing what code ends up in
the package.  In addition to the code David is working on, there are a
few other developers who have tentatively offered to contribute some
working code that they have written.  But we should definitely return
to this point before making an official release.

Unless there are additional responses or concerns, I will ask David to
go ahead with the plan starting Tuesday.  Specifically, he will create
a new scikits package called machinelearning and start moving code out
of the scipy sandbox.  First, he will move the support vector machine
and expectation-maximization code:
scipy.sandbox.pyem  -->  scikits.machinelearning.em
scipy.sandbox.svm     -->  scikits.machinelearning.svm
And then later he may move the genetic algorithm and neural network code:
scipy.sandbox.ga        -->  scikits.machinelearning.ga
scipy.sandbox.ann      -->  scikits.machinelearning.ann

Thanks,

-- 
Jarrod Millman
Computational Infrastructure for Research Labs
10 Giannini Hall, UC Berkeley
phone: 510.643.4014
http://cirl.berkeley.edu/