We’re happy to announce the 7th version of scikits-image!

Scikits-image is an image processing toolbox for SciPy that includes algorithms for segmentation, geometric transformations, color space manipulation, analysis, filtering, morphology, feature detection, and more.

For more information, examples, and documentation, please visit our website.

New Features

It’s been only 3 months since scikits-image 0.6 was released, but in that short time, we’ve managed to add plenty of new features and enhancements, including

• Geometric image transforms
• 3 new image segmentation routines (Felsenzwalb, Quickshift, SLIC)
• Local binary patterns for texture characterization
• Morphological reconstruction
• Polygon approximation
• CIE Lab color space conversion
• Image pyramids
• Multispectral support in random walker segmentation
• Slicing, concatenation, and natural sorting of image collections
• Perimeter and coordinates measurements in regionprops
• An extensible image viewer based on Qt and Matplotlib, with plugins for edge detection, line-profiling, and viewing image collections

Plus, this release adds a number of bug fixes, new examples, and performance enhancements.

Contributors to this release

This release was only possible due to the efforts of many contributors, both new and old.

• Andreas Mueller
• Andreas Wuerl
• Andy Wilson
• Brian Holt
• Christoph Gohlke
• Dharhas Pothina
• Emmanuelle Gouillart
• Guillaume Gay
• Josh Warner
• James Bergstra
• Johannes Schönberger
• Jonathan J. Helmus
• Juan Nunez-Iglesias
• Leon Tietz
• Marianne Corvellec
• Matt McCormick
• Neil Yager
• Nicolas Pinto
• Nicolas Poilvert
• Pavel Campr
• Petter Strandmark
• Stéfan van der Walt
• Tim Sheerman-Chase
• Tomas Kazmar
• Tony S Yu
• Wei Li

Adobe yesterday released its free and open source Type family, Source Code Pro, which includes an eye-pleasing monospace font ideally suited for coding. In the past, and at the recommendation of Fernando Perez, I’ve used the beautiful (but non-free) Consolas by Microsoft; now, which is best?

To install on Linux:

1. Grab the font.
2. Copy the files to ~/.fonts.
3. Run fc-cache -f -v.

The font should now be available for selection in apps such as Firefox, Gnome Terminal, etc. To make it the default font in Emacs::

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(set-default-font "Source Code Pro")

Here’s a comparison of Consolas (left) and Source Code Pro (right):

Comments also on Google+.

I recently tried to install MuMaMo as one of the dependencies for Takafumi Arakaki’s Emacs-based IPython notebook. The instructions on the MuMaMo webpage were as clear as mud and aimed primarily at Windows users. Enters apt-get for Emacs!

My Emacs setup is shared across multiple machines: a synchronized elisp folder, containing *.el files, along with my .emacs configuration. el-get allows you to share your package installation folder in a similar fashion. Here are some relevant configuration snippets:

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; Everything gets installed into ~/elisp, a folder
; I sync across all my machines

(setq el-get-dir "~/elisp/el-get")
(setq el-get-install-dir "~/elisp/el-get/el-get")
(add-to-list 'load-path el-get-install-dir)

; If el-get is missing, install it automatically

(unless (require 'el-get nil t)
  (url-retrieve
   "https://raw.github.com/dimitri/el-get/master/el-get-install.el"
   (lambda (s)
     (goto-char (point-max))
     (eval-print-last-sexp))))

; Install these packages, and call the specified configuration snippets
; after each load
(setq el-get-sources
      '(

        (:name ethan-wspace
         :after (progn
                  (global-ethan-wspace-mode 1)
                  (set-face-background 'ethan-wspace-face "gray95")))

        (:name column-marker
         :after (add-hook 'font-lock-mode-hook
                          (lambda () (interactive) (column-marker-1 80))))

; Also install these packages, no configuration required
(setq my-packages
      (append
       '(el-get maxframe markdown-mode ein python)
       (mapcar 'el-get-source-name el-get-sources)
       )
)

; Check packages and install any that are missing
(el-get 'sync my-packages)

There are two ways to specify packages to be installed: either include them in the my-packages list, or add them to el-get-sources, which in addition allows further customization upon successful loading of the package.

What’s in your stack? Here’s my list of Emacs packages:

Org Mode, Ethan's wspace, Tab Bar, Column Marker, Max Frame, EIN, Python,
JS2

Do you know of any other useful packages? Let me know!