2006-jul-07

• Loss of the sicarray type. SicVar instances have now two elements: __sicname__ (the SIC variable name) and __sicdata__ (a numpy.ndarray). Previously __sicdata__ was a sicarray with itself a Numeric.array attribute.
• NumPy support: SIC variables (arrays and scalars) are now imported as numpy.ndarray, using the same C-API function from Numeric that NumPy still supports.
• Adaptation of the adequates methods of the SicVar class to handle the unique element of the numpy.ndarray scalars through [0] indexing (NumPy only provides indexing for its scalars through [()] index).
• Attempting to define an image attribute which name is already used for a native method or attribute of the numpy.ndarray's will not raise an error anymore but will only warn the user.
• SicVar strings now support concatenation (+) and duplication (*).
• Automatic blank filling when assigning a Python string to a SicVar string (Numeric provides this feature but NumPy does not: it requires the two strings to have the same length).
• A SicVar subarray is now also a SicVar with the same __sicname__ attribute and with a __sicdata__ sharing its data with the original array, and thus with the SIC variable (previously a SicVar subarray was a Numeric.array). Such subarrays inherit the SicVar specific methods, such as string handling or write protection if any.
• Usefull functions such as get(), comm() or exa() are now methods of the Sicfunctions class, and are visible through the sic instance created during the process initialization.
• Creation of the sic(), greg(), define() and delete() methods of the Sic functions class.