Design Requirement Document for boost python EMAN

Introduction

EMAN (Electron Micrograph ANalysis) is a software package for performing semiautomated single-partcle reconstructions from electron micrographs. It is implemented in C++. Because many biology-background users are not familar with C++, this project is to port EMAN to Python, a convenient and simpler script language, so that these users can use and modify EMAN without much difficulty.

Requirements

1. All the implementations in this project shouldn't change anything in the existing EMAN C++ code.

2. The Python classes should have the same names to C++ classes.

3. The public functions should have the same signatures, with C++ types mapping to the corresponding python types.

4. C++ arrays should be ported to lists in python.

5. EMAN's build-in C++ List should be ported to list in python.

6. EMAN classes should support pickle/unpickle.

7. EMData class's data should be exported as Numeric Array in python.