Release Notes for numarray-0.5

Numarray is an array processing package designed to efficiently
manipulate large multi-dimensional arrays.  Numarray is modelled after
Numeric and features c-code generated from python template scripts,
the capacity to operate directly on arrays in files, and improved type
promotions.

I. ENHANCEMENTS

1. Universal Function Overhead Reduction

The constant time overhead for most universal functions has been reduced
by a factor of 10-20.  This results in better performance for small arrays.

2. FFT mode and IRAF boundary modes added to Convolve.convolve2d

There's now an FFT switch for the 2d convolution function in the
Convolve package; when set to 1, convolution is performed via the FFT
rather than using the naiive algorithm.  In addition, convolve2d now
supports boundary modes which are identical to IRAF's convolution
function.

3. Numarray is now supported by f2py

Numarray numerical arrays can now be used with f2py wrappers for
Fortran code.  To compile f2py wrapped extensions for numarray,
use the switch -DNUMARRAY on the f2py command line. Support
is currently limited to f77 and numerical arrays.


II. BUGS FIXED

650926        exotic type coercions
653424        Convolve.boxcar boundary bug
653429        python setup.py build
654669        array index by list
655942        logical operator reductions
657058        inverse real fft bug
677796         byteswap not working
709956        error summing over large boolean arrays
710480        MLab.median makes unnecessary msort call
714537        conjugate function changes its argument

See
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=450446&group_id=1369&func=browse
for more details.

III. CAUTIONS

1. Due to some module renamings, numarray-0.5 will not install
correctly on top of an existing numarray installation. Before
installing numarray-0.5 remove your old version of numarray.

2. Due to reorganization of the C-API, numarray extensions must be
recompiled.

3. For numarray-0.5 and up, the byteswap related methods have been
redefined:

a.byteswap()                   swaps but leaves byteorder alone
a.togglebyteorder()            Does "big" <-> "little"
a._byteswap()                  now an alias for byteswap
a._togglebyteorder()           deleted

4. round() has been deprecated.  Use around() instead.

WHERE
-----------

Numarray-0.5 windows executable installers, source code, and manual is
here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1369

Numarray is hosted by Source Forge in the same project which hosts Numeric:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/

The web page for Numarray information is at:

http://stsdas.stsci.edu/numarray/index.html

Trackers for Numarray Bugs, Feature Requests, Support, and Patches are at
the Source Forge project for NumPy at:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=1369

REQUIREMENTS
------------------------------

numarray-0.5 requires Python 2.2.2 or greater.


AUTHORS, LICENSE
------------------------------

Numarray was written by Perry Greenfield, Rick White, Todd Miller, JC
Hsu, Paul Barrett, Phil Hodge at the Space Telescope Science
Institute.  Thanks go to Jochen Kupper of the University of North
Carolina for his work on Numarray and for porting the Numarray manual
to TeX format.  Thanks also to Edward C. Jones, Francesc Alted,
Paul Dubois, Eric Jones, Travis Oliphant, Pearu Peterson and everyone who
 has contributed with comments and feedback.

Numarray is made available under a BSD-style License.  See
LICENSE.txt in the source distribution for details.

-- 
Todd Miller             jmiller@stsci.edu
