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updating documentation
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jarrodmillman committed Jan 10, 2009
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13 changes: 3 additions & 10 deletions INSTALL.txt
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Building and installing SciPy
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

:Authors: Pearu Peterson <[email protected]>
:Modified by: Ed Schofield <[email protected]>
:Last changed: $Date$
:Revision: $Revision$
:Discussions to: [email protected]

See http://www.scipy.org/scipy/scipy/wiki/GetCode
for updates of this document.

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To test SciPy after installation (highly recommended), execute in Python

>>> import scipy
>>> scipy.test(level=1)
>>> scipy.test()

where the test level can be varied from 1 to 10. To get detailed
messages about what tests are being executed, use
To run the full test suite use

>>> scipy.test(level=1, verbosity=2)
>>> scipy.test('full')


COMPILER NOTES
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68 changes: 5 additions & 63 deletions README.txt
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.. -*- rest -*-

=================================================
Developing SciPy
=================================================

:Author: Pearu Peterson <[email protected]>
:Modified by: Ed Schofield <[email protected]>
:Modified by: Jarrod Millman <millman AT berkeley.edu>
:Last changed: $Date$
:Revision: $Revision$
:Discussions to: [email protected]

.. Contents::


What is SciPY?
What is SciPy?
--------------

SciPy (pronounced "Sigh Pie") is open-source software for mathematics,
science, and engineering. It includes modules for statistics, optimization,
integration, linear algebra, Fourier transforms, signal and image processing,
genetic algorithms, ODE solvers, and more. It is also the name of a very
popular conference on scientific programming with Python.
ODE solvers, and more. It is also the name of a very popular conference on
scientific programming with Python.

The SciPy library depends on NumPy, which provides convenient and fast
N-dimensional array manipulation. The SciPy library is built to work with
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Documentation
-------------

This is an important feature where SciPy is currently lacking. A few
SciPy modules have some documentation but they use different formats
and are mostly out of date. We could use some help with this.

Currently there are

* A SciPy tutorial by Travis E. Oliphant. This is maintained using LyX.
The main advantage of this approach is that one can use mathematical
formulas in documentation.

* I (Pearu) have used reStructuredText formated .txt files to document
various bits of software. This is mainly because ``docutils`` might
become a standard tool to document Python modules. The disadvantage
is that it does not support mathematical formulas (though, we might
add this feature ourself using e.g. LaTeX syntax).

* Various text files with almost no formatting and mostly badly out
dated.

* Documentation strings of Python functions, classes, and modules.
Some SciPy modules are well-documented in this sense, others are very
poorly documented. Another issue is that there is no consensus on how
to format documentation strings, mainly because we haven't decided
which tool to use to generate, for instance, HTML pages of
documentation strings.

So, we need unique rules for documenting SciPy modules. Here are some
requirements that documentation tools should satsify:

* Easy to use. This is important to lower the threshold of developers
to use the same documentation utilities.

* In general, all functions that are visible to SciPy end-users, must
have well-maintained documentation strings.

* Support for mathematical formulas. Since SciPy is a tool for
scientific work, it is hard to avoid formulas to describe how its
modules are good for. So, documentation tools should support LaTeX.

* Documentation of a feature should be closely related to its
interface and implementation. This is important for keeping
documentation up to date. One option would be to maintain
documentation in source files (and have a tool that extracts
documentation from sources). The main disadvantage with that is the
lack of convenience writing documentation as the editor would be in
different mode (e.g. Python mode) from the mode suitable for
documentation.

* Differentiation of implementation (e.g. from scanning sources) and
concept (e.g. tutorial, users guide, manual) based docs.

The documentation site is here
http://docs.scipy.org

Web sites
---------
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