Re: [Visualpython-users] Let's hash out the documentation for restrictive imports

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

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 7:47 PM, Guy K. Kloss <g....@ma...> wrote:
> On Sat, 09 Oct 2010 13:11:44 Bruce Sherwood wrote:
>> I think and hope we're in agreement. My point was a narrow technical
>> one, that in the matplotlib case the simplified import could be
>> handled with a single file (pylab.py) whereas we need a folder named
>> visual due to the existence of visual.graph and visual.factorial and
>> possible imports by someone of other files currently in the visual
>> folder.
>
> Wouldn't it make sense to have "vpython" (or any other name) as a package
> (folder/directory), which contains then the modules graph and factorial?

I 100% agree here... and a bit of reiteration, but the clean module
*must* have all the guts, "visual" becomes a "meeting ground"/facade
of "vpython", numpy, etc., along with some convenience stuff.
"visual" package should do nothing significant.

> Then visual would just need to be a module (visual.py) to import the stuff
> from vpython, vpython.graph, vpython.factorial, ...

After some research I really don't think this is possible; it would
only work if importing "visual" directly, ie. `import visual`.

The standard import machinery directly translates the dotted package
name to a directory hierarchy... the only way I see around this is by
using sys.meta_path, or possibly some tweaking from a C module, but
the latter is beyond my knowledge.

So, it may have to remain a package for compatibility, but that
doesn't mean it needs to implement anything significant; it can still
import what it needs from "vpython".

C Anthony