Paul is a visual data navigation and analyis tool written on top of Python, Qt4, IPython, Numpy and Matplotlib (just to name the most prominent dependencies). It's basically a series of scripts for easier everyday handling of "normal" scientific data. '"normal" scientific data' in this context means what you would usually get out of spectral analysers, tunneling microscope images etc. In my case, it means data from angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy.
It allows point-and-view displaying of scientific spectra, integrates a Matplotlib viewer (and soon editor :-) ) with an easy-to-use file navigator and offers powerful live data introspection and processing from an integrated IPython shell.
It features some sueful ideas borrowed from a commercial data analysis tool called IgorPro(tm) made by a great company called Wavemetrics, a number of data reading/writing functions for various more or less obscure scientific data formats, and some new ideas of my own.
Here's an incomplete feature list:
. Reading and writing if IgroPro(tm) IBW files (binary waves)
. Reading and unpacking of IgorPro(tm) PXP and PXT files (packed experiment files)
. Reading of Elmitec's proprietary LEED/LEEM image format (used in low electron energy microscopy)
. Generating of IgorPro(tm) UXP (Unpacked Experiment Files) for easier exchange of data between Paul and Igor.
. Implementation a "Wave" class, i.e. a numpy.ndarray subclass that can handle intrinsic scaling information as typically used in IgorPro(tm)
. Implementation of indexing/slicing algorithms in "Wave" based not the coordinate system of the intrinsic scale (i.e. data slicing can be done not only like foo[x,y,z], but also like foo(p,q,r), where p,q,r are index objects specifying position information in the coordinate system intrinsic to the data :-) )
. Basic functions for common data analysis tasks (slicing of data, generating of waterfall diagrams etc) that take advantage of the "Wave" interface
. paul-viewer: a scripting-based Matplotlib plotting application similarly to the GUI displayed by Pylab (in fact, it makes heavy use of the Matplotlib's FigureCanvas object :-) ) with the ability to load and automatically reload the plotting script when modified on disk.
. paul-browser: a click-and-display data browser application, allowing to quickly skim through 1D or 2D data files on disk.
. paul-shell: a module to expose as much functionality of paul-browser and paul-viewer to the IPython command line, making Paul integration with the Spyder toolset easier.
The Paul package is released under GPL-v3.
-- Florin Boariu <florin.p(at)rootshell.ro>