Re: [Visualpython-users] Beta test version of VPython for Python 3.1 for Windows

[C A. R. <an...@ex...>]

>On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 6:30 PM, Bruce Sherwood <bas...@nc...> wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Guy K. Kloss <g....@ma...> wrote:
>>
>> Wouldn't this be a good point of time to clean up a little bit of the mess
>> with the wild card imports and the polluted name spaces?
>
> Yes, that's a good idea. I myself am not currently up to doing this,
> but if I recall correctly you had looked into this, yes? It should be
> done in such a way that the novice can still get everything with "from
> visual import *", but there should be an optional restrictive import
> for experts.

I know visual had it roots in assisting physics students, but it seems
to have really grown beyond that; too strict adherence will deter
others from furthering it's reach.  In my case, I came across visual
while developing a real-time, distributed, generic data
visualizer/analyzer, and the namespace thing was a huge... annoyance
:-).

Personally, I think the "visual" package should provide specific
modules for the various things it supports, in a clean, pythonic
manner.  An alternate "visualphysics" package could perform the
wildcard imports from numpy and friends to create an environment
targeted at simulations of physical systems.

Visual to me is, and to others I introduce it as, a simple, intuitive,
and _generic_ way to design and control 3D spaces from python; physics
is only one use case.  I don't know how hard it would be to retain the
current functionality _and_ clean up the namespace... which is why i
suggest 2 packages, or something like:

from visual.physics import *

at the least, the base "visual" package should be the pythonic version.

C Anthony