astrofrog/astropy-api — pull request #1 by astrofrog (2012-10-02 14:35:03+00:00)
Title: Initial API document for WCSAxes

Here is an initial version of the document describing the proposed API for WCS Axes-like functionality in Astropy. I've looked over the APLpy and pywcsgrid2 API, and tried to take elements of each which worked well. I think we should have no interest in making the proposed API backward compatible with either pywcsgrid2 and APLpy, and we should see this as an opportunity to have a 'clean slate'. I also feel that we should only include the bare minimum to start with, i.e. no conveniences for e.g. layout (beyond what matplotlib offers by default), beams, compasses, re-projection, etc. I envisage that there could still be higher-level packages that would make use of the base WCS class and that provide these conveniences (unless we decide some of them belong in the core).

Note that this document makes no statements as to the internal organization of the code, only the final API.

For the moment, I'm only opening the PR on one of my own branches. Once the authors of the document are happy, we can open a PR on the official astropy-api repository and get feedback from the mailing list developers.

One organizational question - do we want to propose this be included in ``astropy.wcs``? (which is what it says at the moment). This seems like a natural place to put it, and allows tight coupling of WCS objects and WCSAxes. For example, the current API does not need to make any statement as to what methods are required on WCS classes.

If you want to endorse this and be listed as an author, just let me know!