========
Overview
========
The classes and functions provided by this interface do not exactly 
replicate the functions provided by the Neuroshare API.  Instead of 
the functional Neuroshare API generally written in c, 
the pyns package was created using an object oriented programming style with 
a focus on having a form natural to the Python language.  

This project was put in place by Ripple LLC., after noticing the growing
use of the Python language in the academic and scientific communities.

=======================
Required Python Modules
=======================
The pyns package makes use of a few Python modules outside the default
modules that would be present in any Python installation.  These 
modules are standard for any scientific or computational
use of the Python language and are likely to be present on your system.

These modules are:

* numpy - A collection of array manipulation objects and functions.
When data is returned from data in the pyns package, numpy arrays 
are used to package the data for easy use with matplotlib.

* matplotlib - A collection of plotting and analysis objects and functions.  
These are not used explicitly in the pyns package, 
but they are used in all the provided examples.

* psutil - A module containing process utilities for Windows, Linux, and OS X
This module is used to check the available system memory.  Cached data 
for spike waveforms has the potential to arbitrarily large, and a check is made
to ensure enough physical memory is present on a system.  However, files 
large enough to cause problems are unlikely.

On a Windows system the Python distribution Python(x, y) makes installing
these modules and other useful analysis packages easy.  More information 
may be found at: http://www.pythonxy.com.

If using Linux platforms, the needed packages depend slightly on the 
Linux flavor, though they represent the same libraries.  On Ubuntu install 
the following packages: python-psutil, python-numpy, python-matplotlib.  
They may be installed using apt-get with the following command::

    $ sudo apt-get install python-psutil python-numpy python-matplotlib

If using a Red Hat variant, install the packages python-psutil, 
python-matplotlib, and numpy.  These may be installed using yum with the 
command::

    $ sudo yum install python-psutil numpy python-matplotlib

============
Installation
============
To install pyns system-wide on your machine either run the command line
setup.py.  This command should install successfully on any platform.  If run
in bash, this would look like::

    $ python setup.py install

If using a Windows system, a msi, produced by Python distutils, is also
available.
