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BEL-Public / mffpy

Reader and Writer for Philips' MFF file format.
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Is there a good reason to use `np.float32` throughout `xml_files.py` #13

Open ViridianForge opened 4 years ago

ViridianForge commented 4 years ago

This question was raised during the review of #12.

Throughout xml_files.py - all potential floating point data is regarded and cast to np.float32. The issues this presents are two-fold: 1) It adds a dependency of numpy to the class where it may not actually be necessary. 2) It requires np.float32 be cast back into a float for the purposes of serializing the data into json.

The question is - do the reasons for using np.float32 outweigh the issues laid out above?

ViridianForge commented 4 years ago

Two investigatory points to start from.

1 - How much larger do MFFs and JSON that mffpy exports get if we use float in place of np.float32? 2 - What floating point precision do NetStation MFFs utilize?