numpy-discussion

[Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Travis O. <oli...@ee...>]

I received a rather hurtful email today that was very discouraging to me 
personally.  Basically, I was called "lame" and a "wolf" in sheep's 
clothing because I'm charging for documentation.    Fortunately it's the 
first email of that nature I've received.  Others have disagreed with my 
choice to charge for the documentation but at least they've not resorted 
to personal attacks on me and my motivations.   Please know that such 
emails do have an impact.  While I try to build a tough skin, such 
unappreciative statements reduce my enthusiasm for working on NumPy 
significantly.

My purpose, however, is not to rant about the misguided words of one 
person.  He brought up a point that I want to clarify.  He asked if I 
"would sue" if somebody else wrote documentation for NumPy.   I want to 
be perfectly clear that this is a ridiculous statement that barely 
deserves a response.  Of course I wouldn't.   First of all, it would be 
extreme circumstances indeed for me to resort to that course of action 
(basically a company would have to copy my book and start distributing 
it on a large scale, belligerently).  Second of all, I would love to see 
*more* documentation for NumPy.

If there are other (less vocal) people out there who are not using NumPy 
because of my book, then I certainly feel sorry about that.  Please dig 
in and create the documentation you so urgently want to be free.   I 
will not stand in your way, but may even help.

But please consider that time is money.  Most people are better off 
spending their time on something else and just cooperating with others 
by paying for the book.  But, I'm not going to dislike or have any kind 
of ill feelings with anyone who decides to spend their time on 
"documentation."  In fact, I'll appreciate it just like everyone else.  
I love the growth of the SciPy Wiki.  There are some great recipes and 
examples there.  This is fantastic.  I'm 100% behind this kind of work.  
Rather than write some kind of "replacement" documentation, contribute 
docstrings to the code and recipes to the Wiki.   Then, those that can't 
or won't buy the book will still have plenty of resources to use to 
learn NumPy.

I'm completely behind all forms of "free" information on NumPy / SciPy 
and related tools.  The only reason I have to charge for the 
documentation is that I just don't have the resources to simply donate 
*all* of my time.   I want to thank all of you who have already 
purchased the documentation.   It has been extremely helpful to me 
personally and professionally.   Without you, my time to spend on NumPy 
would have been significantly reduced.   Thank you very much.

Best wishes,

-Travis

[Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Albert S. <fu...@gm...>]

Hello all

With NumPy 1.0 mere weeks away, I'm hoping we can improve the documentation
a bit before the final release. Some things we might want to think about:

1. Documentation Sprint

This page:

http://www.scipy.org/SciPy2006/CodingSprints

mentions a possible Documentation Sprint at SciPy 2006. Does anybody know if
this is going to happen?

2. Tickets for missing functions missing docstrings

Would it be helpful to create tickets for functions that currently don't
have docstrings? If not, is there a better way we can keep track of the
state of the documentation?

3. Examples in documentation

Do we want to include examples in the docstrings? Some functions already do,
and I think think this can be quite useful when one is exploring the
library.

Maybe the example list:

http://www.scipy.org/Numpy_Example_List

should be incorporated into the docstrings? Then we can also set up doctests
to make sure that all the examples really work.

4. Documentation format

If someone wants to submit documentation to be included, say as patches
attached to tickets, what kind of format do we want?

There's already various PEPs dealing with this topic:

Docstring Processing System Framework
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0256/

Docstring Conventions
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/

Docutils Design Specification
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0258/

reStructuredText Docstring Format
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0287/

5. Documentation tools

A quick search turned up docutils:

http://docutils.sourceforge.net/

and epydoc:

http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/

Both of these support restructured text, so that looks like the way to go. I
think epydoc can handle LaTeX equations and some LaTeX support has also been
added to docutils recently. This might be useful for describing some
functions.

Something else to consider is pydoc compatibility. NumPy currently breaks
pydoc:

http://projects.scipy.org/scipy/numpy/ticket/232

It also breaks epydoc 3.0a2 (maybe an epydoc bug):

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1535178&group_id=32
455&atid=405618

Anything else? How should we proceed to improve NumPy's documentation?

Regards,

Albert

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Gary R. <gr...@bi...>]

All excellent suggestions Albert.

What about creating a numpy version of either the main Numeric or 
numarray document?

I would like to see examples included in numpy of all functions. 
However, I think a better way to do this would be to place all examples 
in a separate module and create a function such as example() which would 
then allow something like example(arange) to spit out the example code. 
This would make it easier to include multiple examples for each command 
and to actually execute the example code, which I think is a necessary 
ability to make the examples testable. Examples could go in like 
doctests with some sort of delimiting so that they can have numbers 
generated and be referred to, so that you could execute, say, the 3rd 
example for the arange() function. Perhaps a runexample() function 
should be created for this or perhaps provide arguments for the 
example() function like example(name, number, run)

The Maxima CAS package has something like this and also has an apropos() 
command which lists commands with similar sounding names to the 
argument. We could implement something similar but better by searching 
the examples module for similar commands, but also listing "See Also" 
cross references like those in the Numpy_Example_List,

Gary R.

Albert Strasheim wrote:
> Hello all
> 
> With NumPy 1.0 mere weeks away, I'm hoping we can improve the documentation
> a bit before the final release. Some things we might want to think about:
> 
> 1. Documentation Sprint
> 
> This page:
> 
> http://www.scipy.org/SciPy2006/CodingSprints
> 
> mentions a possible Documentation Sprint at SciPy 2006. Does anybody know if
> this is going to happen?
> 
> 2. Tickets for missing functions missing docstrings
> 
> Would it be helpful to create tickets for functions that currently don't
> have docstrings? If not, is there a better way we can keep track of the
> state of the documentation?
> 
> 3. Examples in documentation
> 
> Do we want to include examples in the docstrings? Some functions already do,
> and I think think this can be quite useful when one is exploring the
> library.
> 
> Maybe the example list:
> 
> http://www.scipy.org/Numpy_Example_List
> 
> should be incorporated into the docstrings? Then we can also set up doctests
> to make sure that all the examples really work.
> 
> 4. Documentation format
> 
> If someone wants to submit documentation to be included, say as patches
> attached to tickets, what kind of format do we want?
> 
> There's already various PEPs dealing with this topic:
> 
> Docstring Processing System Framework
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0256/
> 
> Docstring Conventions
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/
> 
> Docutils Design Specification
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0258/
> 
> reStructuredText Docstring Format
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0287/
> 
> 5. Documentation tools
> 
> A quick search turned up docutils:
> 
> http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
> 
> and epydoc:
> 
> http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Both of these support restructured text, so that looks like the way to go. I
> think epydoc can handle LaTeX equations and some LaTeX support has also been
> added to docutils recently. This might be useful for describing some
> functions.
> 
> Something else to consider is pydoc compatibility. NumPy currently breaks
> pydoc:
> 
> http://projects.scipy.org/scipy/numpy/ticket/232
> 
> It also breaks epydoc 3.0a2 (maybe an epydoc bug):
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1535178&group_id=32
> 455&atid=405618
> 
> Anything else? How should we proceed to improve NumPy's documentation?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Albert

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[David G. <dav...@gm...>]

What about the documentation that already exists here: http://www.tramy.us/

I think the more people that buy it the better since that money goes to
support Travis does it not?

Dave

On 8/5/06, Albert Strasheim <fu...@gm...> wrote:
>
> Hello all
>
> With NumPy 1.0 mere weeks away, I'm hoping we can improve the
> documentation
> a bit before the final release. Some things we might want to think about:
>
> 1. Documentation Sprint
>
> This page:
>
> http://www.scipy.org/SciPy2006/CodingSprints
>
> mentions a possible Documentation Sprint at SciPy 2006. Does anybody know
> if
> this is going to happen?
>
> 2. Tickets for missing functions missing docstrings
>
> Would it be helpful to create tickets for functions that currently don't
> have docstrings? If not, is there a better way we can keep track of the
> state of the documentation?
>
> 3. Examples in documentation
>
> Do we want to include examples in the docstrings? Some functions already
> do,
> and I think think this can be quite useful when one is exploring the
> library.
>
> Maybe the example list:
>
> http://www.scipy.org/Numpy_Example_List
>
> should be incorporated into the docstrings? Then we can also set up
> doctests
> to make sure that all the examples really work.
>
> 4. Documentation format
>
> If someone wants to submit documentation to be included, say as patches
> attached to tickets, what kind of format do we want?
>
> There's already various PEPs dealing with this topic:
>
> Docstring Processing System Framework
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0256/
>
> Docstring Conventions
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0257/
>
> Docutils Design Specification
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0258/
>
> reStructuredText Docstring Format
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0287/
>
> 5. Documentation tools
>
> A quick search turned up docutils:
>
> http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
>
> and epydoc:
>
> http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/
>
> Both of these support restructured text, so that looks like the way to go.
> I
> think epydoc can handle LaTeX equations and some LaTeX support has also
> been
> added to docutils recently. This might be useful for describing some
> functions.
>
> Something else to consider is pydoc compatibility. NumPy currently breaks
> pydoc:
>
> http://projects.scipy.org/scipy/numpy/ticket/232
>
> It also breaks epydoc 3.0a2 (maybe an epydoc bug):
>
>
> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1535178&group_id=32
> 455&atid=405618
>
> Anything else? How should we proceed to improve NumPy's documentation?
>
> Regards,
>
> Albert
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>



-- 
David Grant
http://www.davidgrant.ca

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Robert K. <rob...@gm...>]

David Grant wrote:
> What about the documentation that already exists here: http://www.tramy.us/

Essentially every function and class needs a docstring whether or not there is a 
manual available. Neither one invalidates the need for the other.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

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

Travis,

I'm very sorry to hear that you got such a response. It was completely 
unwarranted. I am often quite surprised at the vitriol that sometimes 
results from people that are not getting what they want from an open 
source project.

Indeed, the comment about "suing" makes it completely clear that this 
individual completely misunderstood your intentions (and the reality of 
copyright law: you would only have a course of action if your book was 
copied!).

When you first announced the book, I know there was a fair bit of 
discussion about it, and you made it quite clear how reasonable your 
position is. Personally, I think forcing open source projects by writing 
and selling books about them is an excellent approach: it works well for 
everyone. My freedom is not restricted, you get some compensation for 
your time.

Ideally, I'd like to see comprehensive reference documentation 
distributed for free, while more comprehensive explanatory docs could be 
either free or not. One of these days I'll put my keyboard where my 
mouth is and actually write a doc string or two!

In the meantime, I am absolutely thrilled that you've put as much effort 
into numpy as you have. You are doing a fabulous job, and I hope the 
appreciation of all is clear to you.

thank you,

-Chris

PS: If we get a reasonable budget next year, I'll be sure to buy a few 
copies of your book.


-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer
                                     		
NOAA/OR&R/HAZMAT         (206) 526-6959   voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception

Chr...@no...

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Tim H. <tim...@co...>]

Travis,

I'm sorry to hear that you received such an unwarranted attack. 
Although, sadly, not terribly suprised; there are plenty of unpleasant 
fanatics of various stripes that roam the bitstreams.  Let me add a 
hearty "me too" to everything that Chris just said.

This finally motivated me to go out and buy your book, something that's 
been on my list of things that I should do "one of these days now". I'm 
hoping that makes this mystery person unhappy.

Regards,
-tim

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Zachary P. <zp...@st...>]

Hi folks -

I must admit that when I first saw the trelgol web page, I was  
briefly a bit confused and put off about the prospect of moving to  
numpy from Numeric. Now, it didn't take long for me to come to my  
senses and realize (a) that no formerly-free documentation had been  
revoked, (b) that there was enough documentation about the C API in  
the numpy distribution to get me started, (c) that there was a lot of  
support available on the email list, and most importantly (d) that  
Travis and many others are extremely generous with their time, both  
in answering emails on the numpy list and in making numpy better.

I now of course wholeheartedly agree with everything everyone has  
said in this thread, and with the idea behind selling the  
documentation. In fact, I feel a bit ashamed that I ever felt  
otherwise, even though it was just for a few minutes.

However, were I a more grumpy (or stupid) type, I might not have come  
to my senses as rapidly, or ever. That would have been my loss, of  
course. But, perhaps a few little things could help newcomers better  
understand the rationale behind the ebook.

Basically, everyone on this list knows (and supports, it seems!) the  
reasoning behind selling the docs, because it was discussed on the  
list. However, it's not hard to imagine someone new to numpy, or  
maybe a convert from Numeric (who was used to the large, free manual)  
scratching their head a little when confronted with http:// 
www.tramy.us/ . (It's less reasonable to imagine someone then going  
on to personally attack Travis in email -- that's absolutely  
unconscionable.)

I would suggest that the link from the scipy page be changed to point  
to http://www.tramy.us/guidetoscipy.html , which is a little more  
clearly about the ebook, and a little less about the publishing  
method. It might not hurt to expand a bit on that page and mention  
the basic reasoning behind selling the docs, and even (if you see  
fit, Travis) to maybe include links to the other numpy documentation  
resources (list archive and sign up page, old and out-of-date Numeric  
reference [with maybe some mention of why buying the book would be  
better, but that the old ref at least gives the right high-level  
picture to get a newcomer started using numpy], and the numpy wiki  
pages). Any of this would certainly put a newcomer in a more  
charitable state of mind, and forestall any lingering concerns about  
greed or any such foolishness.

Since free advice is worth exactly what you paid for it, feel free to  
ignore any or all of this. I just wanted to mention a few easy things  
that I think might help newcomers understand and feel good about the  
ebook (the first step toward buying it!).

Zach




On Apr 4, 2006, at 5:36 PM, Tim Hochberg wrote:

>
> Travis,
>
> I'm sorry to hear that you received such an unwarranted attack.  
> Although, sadly, not terribly suprised; there are plenty of  
> unpleasant fanatics of various stripes that roam the bitstreams.   
> Let me add a hearty "me too" to everything that Chris just said.
>
> This finally motivated me to go out and buy your book, something  
> that's been on my list of things that I should do "one of these  
> days now". I'm hoping that makes this mystery person unhappy.
>
> Regards,
> -tim
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting  
> language
> that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the  
> live webcast
> and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding  
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> cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642
> _______________________________________________
> Numpy-discussion mailing list
> Num...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/numpy-discussion

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Bill B. <wb...@gm...>]

First of all, it sounds like the individual who mailed Travis about being a
"wolf in sheep's clothing" is suffering from the delusion that you can
actually get rich by selling technical documentation at 40 bucks a pop.
Travis does have a web page up somewhere explaining all his rationale -- I
ran across it somewhere.  I remember when I saw it I was thinking "that's
bizarre -- why on earth would you have to make a whole web page to justify
selling something you yourself created?"  I mean, like it or not, Travis
wrote it so he can do whatever he wants with it.  That's just common sense.
Something apparently some lack.  It reminds me of the story my father told
me when I was like 8 years old about a man who shows up one day and gives a
little boy a dollar bill.  The boy is exctatic, and thanks the man
profusely.  Then the next day the same thing, another dollar.  The boy can'=
t
believe his luck.  The whole week the guy comes, then it becomes a month,
and then a year.  Every day another dollar.  Eventually it becomes such a
routine that the boy doesn't even bother to thank the guy.  Then one day th=
e
man doesn't show up.  The little boy is furious.  He was counting on that
dollar, he already knew how he was going to spend every penny.  The person
who emailed Travis is just like that little boy, furious for not getting th=
e
dollar that wasn't his to begin with, rather than being thankful for the
$365 he was given out of the blue for no particular reason.

--bb

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

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

Zachary Pincus wrote:
> from Numeric (who was used to the large, free manual)

Which brings up a question: Is the source to the old Numeric manual 
available? it would be nice to "port" it to SciPy.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer
                                     		
NOAA/OR&R/HAZMAT         (206) 526-6959   voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception

Chr...@no...

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Robert H. <he...@ta...>]

Let's not forget that this documentation will eventually be free *no  
matter what* -- after a financial goal is met or after a certain  
amount of time.  This makes it fundamentally different than a  
published book (and in my opinion, much better).

I personally think this is an innovative way to create a free product  
that everybody wants, but nobody wants to do.

-Rob


-----
Rob Hetland, Assistant Professor
Dept of Oceanography, Texas A&M University
p: 979-458-0096, f: 979-845-6331
e: he...@ta..., w: http://pong.tamu.edu

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Perry G. <pe...@st...>]

On Apr 5, 2006, at 12:36 PM, Christopher Barker wrote:

> Zachary Pincus wrote:
>> from Numeric (who was used to the large, free manual)
>
> Which brings up a question: Is the source to the old Numeric manual 
> available? it would be nice to "port" it to SciPy.

Sort of. The original source was in Framemaker format. It was converted 
to the Python latex framework in the process of being adopted to 
numarray. The source for that is available on the numarray repository. 
If you want the framemaker source, I may be able to dig that up 
somewhere (or I may have lost track of it :-). Paul Dubois can likely 
provide it as well; that's who gave me the source.

Perry

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Pau G. <pau...@gm...>]

On 4/5/06, Perry Greenfield <pe...@st...> wrote:
>
> On Apr 5, 2006, at 12:36 PM, Christopher Barker wrote:
>
> > Zachary Pincus wrote:
> >> from Numeric (who was used to the large, free manual)
> >
> > Which brings up a question: Is the source to the old Numeric manual
> > available? it would be nice to "port" it to SciPy.
>
> Sort of. The original source was in Framemaker format. It was converted
> to the Python latex framework in the process of being adopted to
> numarray. The source for that is available on the numarray repository.
> If you want the framemaker source, I may be able to dig that up
> somewhere (or I may have lost track of it :-). Paul Dubois can likely
> provide it as well; that's who gave me the source.
>
> Perry
>
+1 to any support to Travis Oliphant. Your work is really helping us.

I am quite ignorant about licences and copyright things, so I would
like to know:

1.- Is it OK to just copy the old Numeric documentation to the wiki
and use it as a starting point for a more complete and updated doc?
2.- Would that be fine for the authors?

I guess it will be very useful to everyone (especially beginners) to
have an extended version of this documentation where there are many
examples of use for every function. The wiki seems a very efficient
way to build such a thing.
It will take some time to manually copy-paste everything to the wiki,
but it is doable

what do you think?

pau

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

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

Perry Greenfield wrote:
> Sort of. The original source was in Framemaker format. It was converted 
> to the Python latex framework in the process of being adopted to 
> numarray. The source for that is available on the numarray repository. 
> If you want the framemaker source, I may be able to dig that up 
> somewhere (or I may have lost track of it :-). Paul Dubois can likely 
> provide it as well; that's who gave me the source.

Thanks. That's good news. Now, when I'm done with everything else I want 
to work on.....

LaTeX is a better option for me anyway. In fact, it's a better option 
for anyone that doesn't already use FrameMaker, as you can at least edit 
some of the text without knowing or using LaTeX at all.

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer
                                     		
NOAA/OR&R/HAZMAT         (206) 526-6959   voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception

Chr...@no...

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[John H. <jdh...@ac...>]

>>>>> "Travis" == Travis Oliphant <oli...@ee...> writes:

    Travis> I received a rather hurtful email today that was very
    Travis> discouraging to me personally.  Basically, I was called
    Travis> "lame" and a "wolf" in sheep's clothing because I'm
    Travis> charging for documentation.  Fortunately it's the first

Wow, harsh.

I would just like to (for a second time) voice my support for your
charging for documentation, and throw out a couple of points for
people to consider who oppose it.

I think a low-ball estimate of the dollar value of the amount of time
Travis has donated to scientific python is about $500,000 dollars (5
years, full-time, $100k/yr -- this is low ball because he has probably
donated more time and he is certainly worth more than that annually!).
If he gets the $300,000 or so dollars he hopes to raise from this
book, he still has a net contribution of more than $200k.  Those of
you who are critical: have you put in that much of your time or money?

Secondly, I know personally that Travis has resisted several offers to
lure him from academia into industry.  Academia, by its nature,
affords more flexibility to develop open source software driven by
issues of breadth and quality rather than deadlines and customer
demands.  By charging for this book, it makes it more feasible for him
to continue to work in academia and support these projects.

Travis and I share some similarities: we both have a wife and kids,
with low-paying academic careers, and lead active python projects.
Only Travis leads two projects to my one and he has five kids to my
three.  I recently left academia for a job in industry because of
financial considerations, and while my firm is supportive of my
matplotlib development (we use it and python extensively in house), it
does leave me less time for development.  So to those of you grumbling
to Travis directly or behind the scenes, think about what he is giving
and back off.  And start donating some of your own time instead of
encouraging Travis to donate more of his.

JDH

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Alan G I. <ai...@am...>]

On Tue, 04 Apr 2006, Travis Oliphant apparently wrote: 
> I'm not going to dislike or have any kind of ill feelings 
> with anyone who decides to spend their time on 
> "documentation."  In fact, I'll appreciate it just like 
> everyone else. 

Of course you were extremely clear about this from the 
beginning.  Thank you for numpy!!!
Alan Isaac (grateful user of numpy)
PS Your book is *very* helpful.

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Ted H. <ted...@ea...>]

I'll just add my voice to the people speaking up to support Travis's  
efforts.  I buy lots of books, and most of the time I don't think too  
much about who I am supporting when I buy them, but  I probably would  
have bought this book even if I didn't need that level of  
documentation just to help support what I see as very important  
work.  I don't see how writing about an open source project and using  
the proceeds to further that project could be seen as anything other  
than a positive.

I also just want to say how impressed I am with what Travis has  
accomplished with this project.  From the organizational effort,  
patience, and persistence of bringing the various communities  
together to the quality and quantity of the ideas, code, and  
discussions, his contributions have been inspiring.

Ted Horst

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Paul D. <pfd...@gm...>]

Amen.

On 04 Apr 2006 21:33:12 -0700, Ted Horst <ted...@ea...> wrote:
>
>
> I'll just add my voice to the people speaking up to support Travis's
> efforts.  I buy lots of books, and most of the time I don't think too
> much about who I am supporting when I buy them, but  I probably would
> have bought this book even if I didn't need that level of
> documentation just to help support what I see as very important
> work.  I don't see how writing about an open source project and using
> the proceeds to further that project could be seen as anything other
> than a positive.
>
> I also just want to say how impressed I am with what Travis has
> accomplished with this project.  From the organizational effort,
> patience, and persistence of bringing the various communities
> together to the quality and quantity of the ideas, code, and
> discussions, his contributions have been inspiring.
>
> Ted Horst
>
>
>
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Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Perry G. <pe...@st...>]

Speaking as someone who thinks he knows what kind of effort is involved 
in creating numpy, I suspect relatively few have any idea of the effort 
and skill that is required to do what Travis has done. Indeed, I 
wouldn't be surprised if Travis hadn't fully anticipated at the start 
what he was getting himself into, and if he hasn't asked himself more 
than once whether he would do it again had he known [I imagine that 
many worthy and memorable efforts fall into this category. Much human 
progress springs out of such initial optimism.] John Hunter is right 
that Travis's contributions to this and other scipy-related projects 
amount to years of work.

For those that find it objectionable that Travis is trying to get some 
partial compensation for this work, consider whether there was any one 
at all in the Python community willing to do this as well as he as for 
free, or even for what he will actually recover from the book. I doubt 
it very much.

Fortunately, I think the number of people that object to Travis 
charging for the book is small. Unfortunately, their impact can be 
disproportionately large. I hope Travis can effectively ignore them.

Perry

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Scott R. <sr...@nr...>]

As someone who has been actively using Numeric/Numarray/Numpy
for about 7 years, now, I heartily agree.

Thanks, Travis.

Scott

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 11:32:42PM -0500, Ted Horst wrote:
> 
> I'll just add my voice to the people speaking up to support Travis's  
> efforts.  I buy lots of books, and most of the time I don't think too  
> much about who I am supporting when I buy them, but  I probably would  
> have bought this book even if I didn't need that level of  
> documentation just to help support what I see as very important  
> work.  I don't see how writing about an open source project and using  
> the proceeds to further that project could be seen as anything other  
> than a positive.
> 
> I also just want to say how impressed I am with what Travis has  
> accomplished with this project.  From the organizational effort,  
> patience, and persistence of bringing the various communities  
> together to the quality and quantity of the ideas, code, and  
> discussions, his contributions have been inspiring.
> 
> Ted Horst
> 
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language
> that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast
> and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory!
> http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642
> _______________________________________________
> Numpy-discussion mailing list
> Num...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/numpy-discussion

-- 
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Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Darren D. <dd...@co...>]

On Wednesday 05 April 2006 00:32, Ted Horst wrote:
> I'll just add my voice to the people speaking up to support Travis's
> efforts.  I buy lots of books, and most of the time I don't think too
> much about who I am supporting when I buy them, but  I probably would
> have bought this book even if I didn't need that level of
> documentation just to help support what I see as very important
> work.  I don't see how writing about an open source project and using
> the proceeds to further that project could be seen as anything other
> than a positive.
>
> I also just want to say how impressed I am with what Travis has
> accomplished with this project.  From the organizational effort,
> patience, and persistence of bringing the various communities
> together to the quality and quantity of the ideas, code, and
> discussions, his contributions have been inspiring.

I agree. I support of what Travis has done.

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[eric j. <er...@en...>]

Travis Oliphant wrote:

>
> I received a rather hurtful email today that was very discouraging to 
> me personally.  Basically, I was called "lame" and a "wolf" in sheep's 
> clothing because I'm charging for documentation.    

Hmmmm....


Chickens getting eaten by foxes.
Farmer builds wire coop.
Coop destroyed by foxes.
More chickens eaten.
Wolf builds wooden coop for free.
Also stands guard but for a fee.
No more chickens eaten.
Most chickens glady pay.
A few grumble about extortion!
Thats fine.
Let them take the guard.
Foxes aren't so afraid of Chickens.
This chicken will take his chances with this wolf.
Turns out its just a lame chicken in wolves clothing.
Smart chicken, he is.

Dumb letter.  Dumb story.

Let see here, your a chicken.  check.  Travis is smart wolf-chicken... 
yeah that works. 
Numpy is the wooden chicken coop. errr... Guard duty is documentation. 
hmmm...
foxes, not sure...  Guess I should keep my day job.


Slightly more seriously...

There's a chicken's foot full of people on the planet that could have done
what Travis has pulled off -- I've actually thought about this a 
little.  Maybe
Jim Huginin could have done it given similar time and motivation.
After that, I come up a little short of candidates -- so maybe its just 
a pigs foot full.
I consider us lucky that one of the few people able to fuse Numeric/numarray
bailed us out and did it.

Documentation is another matter as far as scarcity of qualified 
authors.  I would
trust any number of yayhoos to create
at least passable documentation for Travis' creation. Heck, David Ascher 
managed
to write the Numeric documentation <wink>.  That said, writing docs is 
work,
hard to do well, and not nearly as much fun as writing actual code (for the
people on this list anyway).  That significantly lowers the probability 
of it
getting done.  In fact, I believe LLNL funded the first documentation 
effort to help
ensure that it happened (though I'm not positive about that). 

And, think of the creek we'd be up if he chose to keep the library and 
give away the docs.

I'm all for someone writing free documentation.  It'd be great to have.  
And, if
it were as good as Travis', I might even use it.  Still, it would 
probably be
better for the world if you spent your time on other things that don't 
already
have a solution (like documenting SciPy...).  Once that and all similar 
problems
are solved, loop back around and do the NumPy docs.

One other comment.  I've used another amazing library called agg
(www.antigrain.com) extensively for rendering in kiva/chaco.  I view 
Maxim (the
author of Agg) and graphics rendering in a similar light as Travis and 
Numpy --
there are only a handful of people that could have written agg.  For 
that I am
hugely greatful.  On the downside, agg is very complex and has very little
documentation.  Still a number of people use it without complaint. Based 
on the
evidence, if Maxim wrote documentation and charged for it, the number of
complaints would actually increase.  It is just silly. I would pay his 
price and
sing his praises for the days of my life that he gave back to me.

eric


ps.
# Based on a definitive monte carlo simulation, one of every hundred 
chickens will
# complain.  Don't believe me.  Try it.

dist = stats.uniform(0.0, 1.0)
for chicken in chickens:
    if dist.rvs()[0] < 0.01:
        print "extortion"

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[John H. <jdh...@ac...>]

>>>>> "eric" == eric jones <er...@en...> writes:

    eric> Let see here, your a chicken.  check.  Travis is smart
    eric> wolf-chicken... yeah that works. Numpy is the wooden chicken
    eric> coop. errr... Guard duty is documentation. hmmm...  foxes,
    eric> not sure...  

And I thought you didn't drink anything stronger than Dr Pepper
:-)

JDH

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Charles R H. <cha...@gm...>]

Travis,

On 4/4/06, Travis Oliphant <oli...@ee...> wrote:
>
>
> I received a rather hurtful email today that was very discouraging to me
> personally.  Basically, I was called "lame" and a "wolf" in sheep's
> clothing because I'm charging for documentation.


<snip>

Geez, what's with that. There are any number of "real" books out on python,
I don't hear folks bitching. I think it's wonderful that we have such a goo=
d
reference. I mean, look at numarray 8) I spent the money for your book and
it didn't hurt a bit and was well worth the cost. Anyone who has tried to
write extensive documentation on a big project knows how much work it takes=
,
it isn't easy. Thanks for taking the time and sweat to do so.

Chuck

Re: [Numpy-discussion] NumPy documentation

[Christian M. <mee...@un...>]

I'm glad Travis, that you got such supportive replies - but didn't expect 
anything else. Just let me give two more cents:
a) I am a grateful user of Numpy/Scipy, too.
b) I among of those who fully understand and support your decisions about 
selling the book.
c) I didn't buy the book - yet. (Simply forgotten after a minor 
Pay-Pal-problem I had.)
d) ad c): This will change soon.

And e): Thank you for all your work put into Numpy/Scipy !

Christian