[SciPy-Dev] GSoC Proposal draft -- Improvements to the sparse package of Scipy: support for bool dtype and better interaction with Numpy

[Daniel Smith]

>> Seeking feedback, comments, and criticism
>>
>> Link:
>>
>> https://github.com/cowlicks/GSoC-proposal/blob/master/proposal.markdown
>>
>>
>>
> Do any of the sparse folks have some feedback here?
>
> Chuck

I don't know much about the details/scope of the GSoC or their
proposal process, but I can give some thoughts about the proposed
changes.

Adding the bool data type to would be cool. I think pv has already
discussed some of the issues with that on here.

For the ufuncs improvements, I would just recommend that you be
careful about potential ndarray/matrix incompatibilities. The SciPy
sparse class has a bunch of backends and an unpleasant amount of
repeated code to implement those interfaces. Consolidating interface
code while adding the ufunc functionality would be very helpful. Even
if you only consolidate some CSC/CSR repeated code, that could make
longer term upkeep a lot easier.

NumPy has moved towards the matrix class being a wrapper that simply
changes the interface to the existing ndarray functionality. It seems
that they are also trying to deprecate the use of matrices. Moving the
sparse class closer to a universal ndarray interface would be an
excellent goal, but just adding another interface could cause more
problems than help.

Daniel