[Nipy-devel] Fwd: [ANN] NumPy 1.0 release

[Jarrod Millman]

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:  Travis E. Oliphant

 We are very pleased to announce the release of NumPy 1.0 available for
 download at http://www.numpy.org

 This release is the culmination of over 18 months of effort to allow
 unification of the Numeric and Numarray communities.  NumPy provides the
 features of both packages as well as comparable speeds in the domains
 where both were considered fast --- often beating both packages on
 certain problems.  If there is an area where we can speed up NumPy then
 we are interested in hearing about the solution.

 NumPy is essentially a re-write of Numeric to include the features of
 Numarray plus more.   NumPy is a C-based extension module to Python that
 provides an N-dimensional array object (ndarray), a collection of fast
 math functions, basic linear algebra, array-producing random number
 generators, and basic Fourier transform capabilities.

 Also included with NumPy are:

 1) A data-type object.  The data-type of all NumPy arrays are defined by
 a data-type object that describes how the block of memory that makes up
 an element of the array is to be interpreted.  Supported are all basic
 C-types, structures containing C-types, arrays of C-types, and
 structures containing structures of C-types.  Data-types can also be in
 big or little-endian order.  NumPy arrays can therefore be constructed
 from any regularly-sized chunk of data.  A chunk of data can also be a
 pointer to a Python object and therefore Object arrays can be
 constructed (including record arrays with object members).

 2) Array scalars: there is a Python scalar object (inheriting from the
 standard object where possible) defined for every basic data-type that
 an array can have.

 2) A matrix object so that '*' is re-defined as matrix-multiplication
 and '**' as matrix-power.

 3) A character array object that can replace Numarray's similarly-named
 object.  It is basically an array of strings (or unicode) with methods
 matching the string and unicode methods.

 4) A record array that builds on the advanced data-type support of the
 basic array object to allow field access using attribute look-up as well
 as to provide more ways to build-up a record-array.

 5) A memory-map object that makes it easier to use memory-mapped areas
 as the memory for an array object.

 6) A basic container class that uses the ndarray as a member.  This
 often facilitates multiple-inheritance.

 7) A large collection of basic functions on the array.

 8) Compatibility layer for Numeric including code to help in the
 conversion to NumPy and full C-API support.

 9) Compatibility layer for NumPy including code to help in the
 conversion to NumPy and full C-API support.


 NumPy can work with Numeric and Numarray installed and while the three
 array objects are different to Python, they can all share each other's
 data through the use of the array interface.

 As the developers for Numeric we can definitively say development of
 Numeric has ceased as has effective support.  You may still find an
 answer to a question or two and Numeric will be available for download
 as long as Sourceforge is around so and code written to Numeric will
 still work, but there will not be "official" releases of Numeric for
 future versions of Python (including Python2.5).

 The development of NumPy has been supported by the people at STScI who
 created Numarray and support it.  They have started to port their
 applications to NumPy and have indicated that support for Numarray will
 be phased out over the next year.

 You are strongly encouraged to move to NumPy.  The whole point of NumPy
 is to unite the Numeric/Numarray development and user communities.  We
 have done our part in releasing NumPy 1.0 and doing our best to make the
 transistion as easy as possible.  Please support us by adopting NumPy.
 If you have trouble with that, please let us know why so that we can
 address the problems you identify.  Even better, help us in fixing the
 problems.

 New users should download NumPy first unless they need an older package
 to work with third party code.  Third-party package writers should
 migrate to use NumPy.  Though it is not difficult, there are some things
 that have to be altered.  Several people are available to help with that
 process, just ask (we will do it free for open source code and as
 work-for-hire for commercial code).


 This release would not have been possible without the work of many
 people.   Thanks go to (if we have missed your contribution please let
 us know):

    * Travis Oliphant for the majority of the code adaptation (blame him
 for code problems :-) )
    * Jim Hugunin, Paul Dubois, Konrad Hinsen, David Ascher, Jim Fulton
 and many others  for Numeric on which the code is based.
    * Perry Greenfield, J Todd Miller, Rick White, Paul Barrett for
 Numarray which gave much inspiration and showed the way forward.
    * Paul Dubois for Masked Arrays
    * Pearu Peterson for f2py and numpy.distutils and help with code
 organization
    * Robert Kern for mtrand, bug fixes, help with distutils, code
 organization, and much more.
    * David Cooke for many code improvements including the auto-generated
 C-API and optimizations.
    * Alexander Belopolsky (Sasha) for Masked array bug-fixes and tests,
 rank-0 array improvements, scalar math help and other code additions
    * Francesc Altet for unicode and nested record tests and much help
 with rooting out nested record array bugs.
    * Tim Hochberg for getting the build working on MSVC, optimization
 improvements, and code review
    * Charles Harris for the sorting code originally written for Numarray
 and for improvements to polyfit, many bug fixes, and documentation strings.
    * Robert Cimrman for numpy.distutils help and the set-operations for
 arrays
    * David Huard for histogram code improvements including 2-d and d-d code
    * Eric Jones for sundry subroutines borrowed from scipy_base
    * Fernando Perez for code snippets, ideas, bugfixes, and testing.
    * Ed Schofield for matrix.py patches, bugfixes, testing, and docstrings.
    * John Hunter for code snippets (from matplotlib)
    * Chris Hanley for help with records.py, testing, and bug fixes.
    * Travis Vaught, Joe Cooper, Jeff Strunk for administration of
 numpy.org web site and SVN
    * Andrew Straw for bug-reports and help with http://www.scipy.org
    * Albert Strasheim for bug-reports, unit-testing and Valgrind runs
    * Stefan van der Walt for bug-reports, regression-testing, and
 bug-fixes.
    * Eric Firing for bugfixes.
    * Arnd Baecker for 64-bit testing
    * A.M. Archibald for code that decreases the number of times reshape
 makes a copy.


 More information is available at http://numpy.scipy.org and
 http://www.scipy.org.  Bug-reports and feature requests should be
 submitted as tickets to the Trac pages at
 http://projects.scipy.org/scipy/numpy/
 As an anti-SPAM measure, you must create an account in order to post
 tickets.


 Enjoy the new release,

 Sincerely,
 The NumPy Developers



 *Disclaimer*:  The main author, Travis Oliphant, has written a 350+ page
 book entitled "Guide to NumPy" that documents the new system fairly
 thoroughly.  The first two chapters of this book are available on-line
 for free, but the remainder must be purchased (until 2010 or a certain
 number of total sales has been reached).  See http://www.trelgol.com for
 more details. There is plenty of free documentation available now for
 NumPy, however.  Go to http://www.scipy.org for more details.