Re: [matplotlib-devel] modifying TConfig

[Christopher B. <Chr...@no...>]

Gael Varoquaux wrote:
> Guys, I agree with all this. It's not about the theory, but about the
> user experience. The user just types along, and doesn't read books and
> manuals. A least the average user. And we want to make it as easy as
> possible for her.

Yes, we all like that.

Which is why it was decided that __repr_ was the better default for 
display at the command line. See my example, too many questions along 
the lines of "python has a bug!" -- I'm guessing a very large fraction 
of those were about FP issues -- poorly understood my most newbies.

I think it is clearly the best choice for things like a single floating 
point number, but for far more complex objects? who knows. As an 
example, look at the default behavior of numpy arrays:

 >>> a = numpy.ones((3,3))
 >>> a
array([[ 1.,  1.,  1.],
        [ 1.,  1.,  1.],
        [ 1.,  1.,  1.]])


Classic __repr__.

but:

 >>> a = numpy.ones((1000,1000))
 >>> a
array([[ 1.,  1.,  1., ...,  1.,  1.,  1.],
        [ 1.,  1.,  1., ...,  1.,  1.,  1.],
        [ 1.,  1.,  1., ...,  1.,  1.,  1.],
        ...,
        [ 1.,  1.,  1., ...,  1.,  1.,  1.],
        [ 1.,  1.,  1., ...,  1.,  1.,  1.],
        [ 1.,  1.,  1., ...,  1.,  1.,  1.]])

no longer follows the __repr__ rules. I think that's an excellent choice 
-- it's really never useful to spew something that large to the screen.

Given this discussion, what are you currently proposing?

-Chris


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Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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Chr...@no...