[SciPy-User] Suggestion for numpy.genfromtxt documentation

[Skipper Seabold]

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Pierre GM <pgmdevlist at gmail.com> wrote:
> All,
> You'll be happy to learn that I am working on some additional docs for
> genfromtxt. I introduced some new features (`filling_values`,
> `skip_footer`), deprecated some others (`missing` should be
> `missing_values`, `skip_row` should be `skip_header`), modified how
> some of the arguments worked (`missing_values` doesn't have to be a
> dictionary any more), to such an extent that it may get overwhelming
> for a new user. Moreover, trying to fit every single  bit of
> information in the docstring of the function is maybe a tad counter-
> productive.
> So, expect some kind of draft in a few days. I'm not sure where to put
> it yet (probably right in `numpy/doc`) nor to how to point to it. I'll
> let our doc specialists decide what to do.
> Cheers
> P.

Good news!  I'm looking forward to seeing what you've done and
possibly contributing to lengthier documentation.

One thing that I was thinking, and I think Dharhas' comments underline
this is that for users (ones looking for some kind of statistical
package at least), the first thing you want to do is get your data in
and start playing.  That's how I operate, at least.  "Shoot first, RTM
later."  So I'm glad the io functions are getting some attention, and
that it's looking like it's now not totally necessary to understand
the subtleties of constructing a dtype to have a first go.

Cheers,

Skipper