[Plplot-devel] New python plplot "user-friendly" API completed.

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

I have just completed my work on plplot.py which implements the
user-friendly plplot python module, and this should complete my python work
for a while.  This user-friendly plplot module is identical to the "raw"
plplotc python extension module built using swig-1.3 except that the
argument lists for plcont, plshades, and plshade are allowed some additional
useful variations and simplifications beyond the vanilla argument lists
provided by plplotc. Note this API is much more extensive than the prior
"user-friendly" API for plcont, plshade, and plshades that was implemented
with the old plmodule.c approach.  Presumably, there are also corner cases
which now act differently than before for these 3 functions.

The user-friendly module works well with xw09.py, xw15.py, and xw16.py (I
didn't modify xw15.py which already uses a simplified form of plshade, but
xw09.py and xw16.py have been modified to take advantage of some of the
simplifications to plcont and plshades.)

I have also tried the installed version (after making the small but
important fix to copy plplot.py to the python installation directory), and
all python examples work in that case also.

Anyhow, now that everything seems to be working for the examples, I would
appreciate those of you with a python interest to give this user-friendly
module a lot more thorough testing with your own favorite plcont, plshade,
and plshades examples.

Also, a general testing of the new python plplot API is in order with your
favorite python plots which will inevitably test more of the new API than
the examples.

Unless further testing finds some issues, my work on python should be
essentially done for a while.  I would like to thank Gary once again for
creating the new python interface, for the important plotsh3d bug fix in the
PLplot library, and for friendly e-conversations as we sorted out some new
python interface issues.

Alan

email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902	FAX: 250-721-7715
snail-mail:
Dr. Alan W. Irwin
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, V8W 3P6
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