amit's blog

The SEES Book Application is a simple application similar to django book and hg book. It has the features that enables a user to comment on all the paragraphs of the book.
Although the application uses reST format for editing, it converts it into a docbook intermediate. This docbook intermediate can be used for publishing the book into pdf format. Thus this app makes a great idea for web publishing and thus provides a discussion framework for various parties involved in creation of a book.

At the heart of it is a web application written in django that keeps a database of all the comments made on different paragraphs. Since the database of the number of paragraphs can change over the course of writing the book, it is kept in the form of python dictionary which is created every time the book is rebuilt. The commenting system is handled using javascript similar to django book.

Since we need to take care of the dynamic nature of the book during the discussion period, there is a build system for the book. The build system ensures that comments are not lost over the course of the discussion. It uses common tools like xsltproc and rst2xml/docbook converter in python docutils. xsltproc is used to convert xml/docbook to html using some xsl stylesheet. There is a tremendous scope for improvement in the app. It requires code refactoring, beautifying and making the code more readable and configurable . Generalization and making it more applicable to other similar use cases. First of all the docbook converter is specific for this project. A generalized docbook converter in docutils will be great . Their is work being done on in the docutils sandbox. Also a workflow design that automates indexing of chapters is required. A more generalized app can become a framework for book publication related discussions.

The url to the application is http://fossee.in/review/ and the code for the application is available at http://fossee.in/hg/SEES-hacks/

The first version of Indian Scipy Conference was inaugurated on 12th December by Dr. Prabhu Ramachandran , Dr. Travis Oliphant (President, Enthought) , Mr. R Narayan (Vice President TCS Learning and Development), Prof. Elizabeth Sherly and Mr. Jarrod Millman in Technopark, Trivandrum . The Conference was organized by FOSSEE, Space-Kerala and SIG-FOSS. The aim of the conference was to create awareness and spread the use of Python in the Indian Scientific community . Also it tried to get the developers from India and abroad to tell about how they were using Scipy and Python for their research needs . They also brainstormed and sprinted on improving scipy documentation and code .

Mr. R. Narayan, former Vice-President TCS(Learning and development) started the conference by talking about object-oriented programming language paradigm and how high level languages like Python have made programming more accessible to people from different backgrounds. Then Prof. Elizabeth Sherly talked about importance of FOSS in Education.

Dr. Travis Oliphant of Enthought and one of the chief architects of Numpy kicked off the talks about how he started using Python for his research needs in the year 1998 . He traced the development of Numpy starting from Jim Hugunin's work on numeric . He also talked how open source development works and multiple people from different geographical locations collaborated to create Numpy by contributing small projects they were developing. He also showed that how Scipy and his company Enthought was working in diverse fields like embedded systems to Oil industry and food industry.

Prof. Kannan Moudgalya talked about his work with spoken tutorials at IIT Bombay. He shared his vision of freeing computer education through FOSS tools and spoken tutorials delivered in all the regional languages. Spoken tutorials could be used to bridge the digital divide. After that Chandrashekhar Kaushik talked about his Python based SPH framework and how it can be used to do simulations of particle interactions.

The second days talks were started by Christopher Burns from University of California, Berkley. He talked about NiPY, an open source neuro imaging tool developed in Python. NiPY project is an environment for the analysis of structural and functional neuro imaging data. He believed that Scipy and Python can function as great tools for scientific computing and hoped that more scientists and engineers will start using Python . David Cournapeau, the maintainer of Numpy project talked about the progress made in building numpy on different distributions and the feature set that will be added in the next few versions . He also introduced people to toydist a build system he was writing which tried to rectify the problems in building code using setuptools and distutils .The Chaco talk by Dr. Travis Oliphant on the second day got a lot of interest among people because of its ability to create very useful and interactive plots. He showed the power of Chaco by plotting the frequency of his voice using Chaco. Farhat Habib of IISER talked about using Python in Data Mining and Data Visualization especially in relation to gene regulation. Dr. Prabhu Ramachandran introduced people to Mayavi, a 3D visualization tool written by him. He also introduced Sage , an open source mathematical software. He showed Sage notebook's features like solving symbolic expressions and creating plots within the notebook. He also told people about the upcoming Sage days 25, India in August. In the end he thanked all the speakers, organizers and participants for making Scipy India successful.