[SciPy-Dev] improvements of optimize package

[Denis Laxalde]

Hi,

As discussed recently on the -user list [1], I've started thinking
about possible improvements of the optimize package, in particular
concerning the consistency of functions signature, parameters/returns
names, etc. I've posted a proposal on the wiki of my gihub account [2].
In brief, the proposal is two-fold:

 - First, concerning the standardization of functions signature, I
   would propose in particular to gather solver settings in a
   dictionary (named `options`) and to generalized the use of the
   `infodict`, `ier`, `mesg` outputs which respectively correspond
   solver statistics, exit flag and information message. I've tried
   also to choose simple yet informative variables names.

 - Then, as discussed in the aforementioned thread, the implementation
   of unified interfaces (or wrappers) to several algorithms with
   similar purpose is proposed. There definition is basically taken
   from the classification of the optimize package documentation [3].

I've also try to list the impact of the proposed changes on the
existing functions as well. Also, having started working on the code, I
would say that most of this is feasible. Yet, many choices are somehow
arbitrary and are thus subject to discussions so: comments welcome!

-- 
Denis Laxalde

 1: http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/scipy-user/2011-September/030444.html
 2: https://github.com/dlaxalde/scipy/wiki/Improvements-to-optimize-package
 3: http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/optimize.html